Design and Simulation of Autonomous Robotic Inspection and Micro-Repair System for Offshore Wind Turbine Structures with VR Tele-Presence Control

Abstract

A simulation-based concept for an autonomous robot for micro-inspection and micro-repair of offshore wind turbine structures is presented. A quadruped crawler with adhesion and two small manipulators is modelled in SolidWorks, where simplified finite-element meshes and turbine data from the literature are used to check basic structural safety. Model Predictive Control and an Extended Kalman Filter on reduced-order models are used in MATLAB to study robot motion control and state estimation. The findings imply that practical inspection coverage and safe operation are achievable. Basic non-destructive evaluation tools are included to support defect detection on turbine surfaces and the architecture could later be extended with virtual reality interfaces. Instead of using a constructed prototype, the study is based on simulations.