Kawasaki and BladeRobots, a Vestas company, are using a crewless helicopter and a blade maintenance robot to automate one of the most challenging jobs in wind power: turbine blade maintenance.
Currently, blade inspections and repairs are mostly done by specially trained technicians who rappel down blades hundreds of feet in the air. It’s slow, expensive, risky, and increasingly hard to staff as the global wind fleet continues to grow.
The new partnership pairs Kawasaki’s crewless helicopter, called K‑RACER, with BladeRobots’ blade maintenance robot. In the system the companies are developing, the helicopter, capable of lifting up to 200 kg (440 lbs), lifts the robot off the ground, places it directly onto a wind turbine blade, and later retrieves it once the work is done. The robot carries out maintenance tasks automatically on the blade’s surface.
By automating this process, the companies say the system can cut labor hours, improve worker safety, and deliver more consistent maintenance results. That’s becoming increasingly important as wind operators face a growing backlog of blade inspections and repairs across aging fleets.
Before formalizing the partnership, Kawasaki and BladeRobots conducted a pilot at a wind farm in Denmark, with the support of Vestas Wind Systems. The test was carried out in strong winds typical of operating wind farms and completed a real-world sequence: the K‑RACER helicopter lifted the robot, placed it on the leading edge of a turbine blade, and later retrieved and lowered it back to the ground using a combination of autonomous flight and remote control.
With the technical feasibility now proven, Kawasaki and BladeRobots say they’re moving toward real-world deployment and commercialization of the automated blade maintenance system.
Check out the crewless helicopter and robot in action in the video below:
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