Chris Cieslak, director and founder of BladeBUG, joined Allen and Dan to talk about his unique vision for robotic wind turbine repair. There are a handful of wind turbine maintenance, repair and inspection robots making a push toward ubiquity in the wind industry, but BladeBUG (follow them on linkedin here) has a design that is unique among all the others currently in use. The BladeBUG robot crawls using six independent legs–like an actual insect–with each leg utilizing its own vacuum system (video of it in action here) to remain stuck to the blade. Watch this episode on YouTube here.
In this episode of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, we dive into Chris’ current iteration of his BladeBUG robot, the technology and unique capabilities of it, and his overall vision for wind turbine operations and maintenance. The wind industry is without a doubt moving toward automated and robotic maintenance whenever possible, and we were excited to get his input as a founder of a growing tech startup in the space.
This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us!
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Transcript: EP60 – Chris Cieslak, Founder of BladeBUG, on Their Uniquely Capable Wind Turbine Maintenance Robot
0:00
This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. At Weather Guard, we make lightning protection easy. If your wind turbines are due for maintenance or repairs, install our StrikeTape retrofit LPS upgrade at the same time. A strike tape installation is the quick, easy solution that provides a dramatic long lasting boost to the factory lightning protection system. Forward thinking wind site owners install StrikeTape today to increase uptime tomorrow, learn more in the show notes of today’s podcast.
0:37
Welcome back. I’m Allen Hall. I’m Dan Blewett. And this is the uptime podcast where we talk about wind energy engineering, lightning protection and ways to keep your wind turbines running.
0:57
All right, welcome back to the uptime wind energy podcast. I’m your co host, Dan Blewett. On today’s show, we’ve got a great guest, Chris Cieslak of BladeBUG is here. And I’m also joined by my co host Allen Hall. Allen, how are you sir? Hey, great, Dan. Boy, Chris, brings a lot of information to the table during this episode. And it’s really interesting to hear all the robot technology that they’ve been working on over in the UK. Yeah, so Chris is the founder of bladebug and a former blade design engineer with with Festus and some others. And so he’s got a lot of a lot of technical know how about, you know, winter and blade design. And so when they went out to create a robotic solution, you know, he decided that, you know, a vacuum independent leg moving honestly, kind of like a crawling critter. That’s why they’re called BladeBUG; BladeBUG was their solution. It’s a really interesting technology. And they can do a lot of things that some of the other robotics companies won’t be able to.
1:54
So yeah, I mean, just hearing him go into depth about some of their solutions, and the technology and the redundancy. And just, there’s a lot of interesting things that go into such a high tech prototype, it is a very difficult event they’re trying to do, right. So they’re going to try to go out on physical and a blade, particularly offshore, and do all kinds of either measurements or repair procedures on a blade. That’s a very difficult problem to try to solve. But I think they’ve taken several years to develop this technology. And I think that’s one of the benefits to where they’re at today is that they spent all the hard work and time evolving to the space they’re at now into the robot they have now because without spending those years in development, you don’t have a really qualified robot, in my opinion, and then you don’t have something you can really deploy and be reliable. And they’ve gone through all those early learning pains that that most startup companies do. And now they’re at a stage where they’re going to really be deploying robots, and the technology is really good. And I think they’ve shown themselves to be a really reliable platform, that is also adaptable to all kinds of tools. So this is a really interesting interview. And there’s a lot of great information just about the robot, and its technology, but also about the business aspect of it and where the company is headed. So it’s a it’s a really nice interview. Yeah, I mean, and they were incubated by the and they still are in partnership with ORE catapult, which is the incubator out in Scotland, and just to hear their influence and how it’s helped them, you know, get on actual turbines and, and do testing in real world conditions, and just how important that is to getting, you know, from the design to the prototype to the you know, everyday use scenario, that’s such an important part. And that can be such a really difficult jump, you know, like, when we, you know, on previous podcasts, like everyone talks about just how, you know, they need to have, you know, is this is this solution, what customers want, you know, is this solution going to be viable, you know, we need to test this in real world, you know, scenarios, but it can be challenging for the owners of these, you know, multi multi million dollar wind farms to let people you know, try it out, essentially, on their turbine, even when the technology is proven, and they had a great last 12 months, you know, doing their first walk back in the fall, and then doing some, some more, some some light.
4:23
I can’t remember, you know, and it looks like they have a lot, you know, they have a busy summer coming up here as well of real world testing. So, so yeah, I mean, it’s just a really interesting evolution for their business. And the ORE catapult I think, is unique in a sense, because they’re so focused on their wind turbines, offshore wind turbines, and United Kingdom and in particularly up in Scotland is going to be a plethora of wind turbines being installed in the next couple of years. And they needed to develop their own internal framework to support that and all the all the pieces around just putting the Germans out to off into the sea out there. It’s a unique situation.
5:00
That ORE catapult is in in the in the services that they provide. We in the United States, we don’t really have such a setup. So you’re right, Dan, in a sense, a smaller company has a with a great technology has a very difficult time to try to get to an OEM or a large operator, because there’s just so many layers of bureaucracy sort of, but also, it’s very hard to to sort of break those barriers, particularly during COVID times because no one’s in the office. So you know, ORE catapult provides a very, very special service and can accelerate a company like bladebug, which is what they’re there to do so and I think blood blogs in a very unique position is that they have access to OEMs, but also an access to a development turban, where they can try out the different things about the robot. So it’s a it’s a unique
5:50
and unique experience and in a unique time for both offshore wind in the UK and for bladebug. Yeah. So without further ado, we’re gonna jump to our conversation with Chris Cieslak of BladeBUG.
6:11
All right. Well, Chris, thanks so much for joining us on the show. We’re excited to chat with you about bladebug. How’s everything out there in the UK? Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, thank you, for hosting me and for allowing us to talk about a bug. So we’re gonna jump right into it. I mean, we’re excited to talk about what is really a unique robot, obviously, there’s a couple robotics companies trying to tackle inspections and repair. But you have a really unique model, you know, your your bladebug robot is one that’s not cable driven.
6:43
You know, it’s got vacuum independent legs. So can you talk to us about the current model, how you got there, and some of the technology, you know, that it’s, it’s taking up to these, you know, huge wind turbine blades. Yeah, and I’d love to So, just to set the scene a little bit, I’ve got a background as a wind turbine blade designers for a number of years designing blades and have an understanding of how they’re manufactured and promising go wrong with them. And it was actually taking that experience and understanding that there is
7:16
there hasn’t been much improvement in blade maintenance over the years apart from the advancement of drones for which have been really good at sort of performing, you know, division inspections. But when it comes down to the detailed inspections, and the repairs, it still relies very heavily on you know, manual rope access technicians, that I felt there was a better way of doing especially as they’re getting larger, especially offshore turbines are getting larger and further from shore. And the reliance on young human intervention, you know, it’s just, it’s going to become more and more challenging. So we’ve come up with a very novel concepts. And as you mentioned, it’s, it’s got multiple legs, we’ve got six legs with multiple degrees of freedom. And we use vacuum to attach ourselves to the surface of the blade. And what these multiple legs have forced us to do is it enables us to conform and adapt to the changing shape of the blade from the root, which is a large cylinder, right down to the tip, which is a very small Air Force. So we can be in very close contact with the blade everywhere. And so this allow enables us to do very detailed inspections. So if you have your drone inspection, and there’s some ambiguous footage, we can go there, we can get very clear, steady footage from that, but then can go beyond that we’re in close contacts, we can do your very detailed inspections using techniques such as ultrasonic, non destructive testing, to look at damage buildup beneath the surface. And then actually, once we’re there, we can also do repair. So it’s it’s, we’ve developed a robot that is really adaptable and flexible, not just in terms of what you can physically do, but also what it can actually achieve on the on the blade. So it’s an inspection, maintenance and repair device to tackle a variety of problems that you will see on blades during their lifetime in service. I think it’s something as we look up at these wind turbines, we don’t take, I think we take for granted that the the blade is actually kind of complex in the shape, right, it twists slowly as it goes towards the end. Like you said, like, you look up at these things, and they’re huge. And you think that’s just kind of like a surfboard, I think is like the easy way to for like an outsider to say Oh, like just, you know, some wings, but
9:12
what what kinda so is it just adhering to the blade if you were, you know, using like tracks or I mean, what were other? What were other prototypes or other design conceptions or concepts that maybe you just like, wouldn’t have worked because of the changing? I mean, why did you settle on independent legs? I mean, I’m sure there are lots of different ways to design a robot that could potentially do something, but you settled on your current design after lots and lots of iterations, right? Yeah, that’s correct. So it didn’t it didn’t start off as a as a multi legged robot, more complex surfaces. So I think one of the earliest concepts I came up with was a wheel with vacuum cups. So the idea being that it would be a wheeled vehicle that would have suction sticking to it as it rotates along the surface. But there are problems with that time in turning the vacuum on and off. We then looked at a more common
10:00
Or track device. So there’s lots of sort of Caterpillar track devices that are used for safe pipe inspections and so integrate in a vacuum system onto that. But what really came down to
10:12
deciding on the hexapod, or the multi legged robot was its ability to adapt and conformed to all the different parts. So we can straddle a leading edge. And not only that, once we’re there, we can use that dexterity to control the body in a way that you would require a separate multiple degree of freedom arm that you see on other robotic devices to perform tasks. So we don’t actually have to have separate elements to perform tasks on a plate, we can use the robot to perform, you know, a scanning sweep, or you know, to activate your lightning protection system probe on to the receptor, we don’t need any separate devices. So it was
10:49
a very complex system to develop.
10:52
And by making it complex, it there’s been challenges. But what we’ve ended up doing is making a very complex system that’s very easy to use. So we have a simple joystick approach, we just have a controller, the robot does all the clever scanning and calculates where to place its feet and the operator navigates it left, right, forward and back. And it’s a very simple device to use once it’s actually on the blade. Yeah, so you guys had some big news, obviously, in the end of 2020. So you guys had your first ever walk up on the I guess that’s a, you know, it’s a functioning wind turbine, but it’s, you know, what would you call it’s more of like a test turbine that the the way that they described with the ORE catapult? Yeah, I think they termed it as like a demonstrated turbine. So it’s a place where people can demonstrate new technology. But it’s, it’s a big seven megawatt offshore turbine, but it’s, it’s near shore as you can get. So it’s about 20 meters from the shore connected via a bridge, which is fantastic if you don’t need to worry about getting to site, which is fantastic.
11:52
And it’s big, if the blades are sort of at three and a half meters, it’s a big big turbine. And so to be able to demonstrate the capabilities on that is fantastic for us, it really validates what we’re doing in the most realistic scenario that we could possibly get. So.
12:13
So that’s right, towards the end of last year, we did that as our first major bait book. And actually, just last week, we were back there again, and we performed our first lightning protection system, check on the blade for blade walk. And we’ve got some excellent sort of footage and data from that, which is Yeah, it was great to be back there and see the progression that we’ve made again, over the course of winter, and during another lockdown, and the challenges of that everyone’s been facing for COVID. So it’s been really exciting to get back out there. The weather gods were on our side, we had some beautiful weather for three days. And we got lots of great data to progress the robot going forward as well. So when when you’re going through different testing stages in different prototypes, are you testing it on, like increasingly concept or complex services? like did you test, you know, robot variation, one on just like a flat surface? And if it can do that, then you go on? Or did you kind of go from complex surfaces at the beginning, trying to maybe weed out a design that was never gonna work? How does that process work? I’m pretty interested to hear, you know, because it seems like you go lots of different ways where if you could get stuck with a design that does really well with just a flat surface, it just might never, as you scale up or as you continue to evolve with it, it might not work when you have, like you said that complex, twisting, changing design on a blade. And that’s, that’s very accurate for what we encountered when we were doing our development. So we started off on flat surfaces, because working in office, that’s what you have. And so we started with a basic with a basic hexapod with vacuum cups. And then when you start walking around, you realize that it’s not a normal hexapod the fact that your feet are adhere to the surface, and they’re not able to slip and slide and you basically constrained it in a way which robots aren’t normally constrained, you have to overcome certain difficulties. And that gets amplified when you’re walking on the highly complex geometries of a wind turbine blade. So we’ve had to do some very novel
14:07
approaches to our design to overcome these challenges. And so we did start off with flat but very quickly, I’ve been testing on curved surfaces so we’ve we’ve made lots of mock up surfaces within the Office, just to make sure that actually it’s not limited to a surface type. And we’ve got a solution now where we have a constant walking speed over flat two highly curved surfaces without any problems whatsoever. So on the on the blade surface itself, I know different blade manufacturers use different kinds of coatings and and leading edge protections and a variety of different surface textures. How does that influence the robot in the vacuum and the movement of the robot? How do you how do you overcome those things. The cups that we use are relatively standard industrial cups that are able to conform and adapt to quite a lot of surface irregularities. So
14:59
For example, during our development of our walking before we
15:05
ventured onto a blade on that turbine, we did trials on a on a tower section that the offshore and energy catapult have in their facilities and blinds. And we were able to walk down the outside of a tower. So we were having to go across weld seams and bolted flanges, and the cups were able to conform and adapt very well to those. So we don’t really have any issues as such, there are, you know, if there are big discontinuities or something like that, there could be a problem. But the way that the robot logic works, you know, we can sense what each cup is doing. And if one cut, for example, doesn’t have vacuum, we can either make a decision call to or it can make a decision on whether to continue if it’s safe to do so, or just to readjust that foot. And you know, go Okay, that one isn’t quite good. So I’m going to move it to another place and carry on it’s walking gait. As such, it’s the robot has the intelligence set inside of it. And this is different than a lot of other sort of platforms that we’ve seen, in that a lot of times the operators making all the decisions and how the robot quote unquote, robot moves up and down, and your case, you’ve actually made your robot intelligent, so it can find its next footing. So the the operator itself just says I need to get to point B. And the robots really figured out step by step. Is that how it works internally in the robot, we’re not quite there yet. So if we turn it as a semi autonomous device, in a sense that yes, that we have a joystick and we press forward, and the robot automatically knows where to place its feet and adjust to the changing curvatures. There probably is some manual intervention with things like this surface discontinuity, but it’s something that we will be incorporating that logic and that sort of intelligence into it as we go on. Sure. And one of the big questions we hear a lot about from the wind community about robots adhering to the blade is the comment that Well, my blades are dirty, and well, my blades have salt on them. Does that influence the ability of the robot to stay attached? You’ve been testing a cat ORE catapult, which is offshore, which there is a lot of salt is have you seen any issues with that? We haven’t. And in fact, it’s, it’s been working extremely well, you know, we haven’t seen every eventuality on a blade. But what we do see is that we do see a build up on the cups, but it doesn’t affect their performance. And we have been doing a lot of testing throughout. So
17:22
when it started off being designed, we sort of started with the vacuum cups up. And we did a lot of tests with salt spray, and you know, working on blades that are left out in the environment for a long, long time. And we’re in terrible condition. So we were confident that actually the cups work. And what is most likely to happen is the vacuum system will need a sort of a purge every now and then to clean it from you know that if it has any sort of salt buildup, we’re sure we haven’t seen any detrimental ones at all. Well, that’s that’s, that’s amazing, because the complexity of this problem seems so enormous, just being an outsider looking at that problem. And it’s, I’ve watched your company’s for progress over the last year or so. That’s amazing. It’s quite amazing that you can actually climb that blade in this in these rough conditions, because I think that’s probably one of the biggest question marks out there is how does this actually work? And you’ve demonstrated it successfully multiple times now. So that’s a really good foundation to start with. Yeah, no, it’s very encouraging to see for sure. And so let’s talk a little bit more about the vacuum. Because
18:27
obviously, even if the, you know, it’s a low wind day, and you’re the blades are obviously going to be shut down. So nothing could be moving, but it’s still pretty rough environment.
18:37
How much vacuum like do all six legs have to be firmly planted for it to be, you know, stable and stay up there, I mean, how many legs can come off or be off at any one time, and the robots stay on the blade, at this stage of development, like safety’s probably our main priority, so we always try and maintain at least three points of contacts with the blades, or with each vacuum cup, on a sort of tripod walking gait, in contact with vacuum achieve. So
19:05
one of the nice things that we’ve designed within the robot is, is a completely independent vacuum distance, each leg is independent from the other. So if one has a problem, for example, if you’ve walked on a crack in the in, there’s leaks, we can we can see, you know, is that legs severe enough that it’s gonna cause a problem, but actually two legs are sufficient to continue the progress. So
19:26
we haven’t really tested it in vain. So, you know, we’ve been extremely cautious at the moment. But you know, we don’t need to have, you know, all three legs down at one point to be to have safe sort of motion on the blade. I love that. I love to hear that design, because it’s a very Aero spacious design, I call it because it’s redundant. And that’s exactly what you need out there. I know a lot of earlier robots that we have seen don’t seem to have any redundancy in them. They’re like single point failures all over the design. Your design is redundant and robust, which makes it much more
20:00
reliable. And I think that’s a huge advantage for your design technique. Thank you. And it’s not, it probably gets even more
20:09
safety critical when you think actually, if you do have a failure on a leg, you can change your walking gait. So it’s four down. And two, you don’t have to stick with a tripod. So it’s very adaptable in how it walks, you’re not limited to a certain walking style. If you come across problems, if you find that actually, you do need more purchase on the blade than then the three legs we can give, you can increase that and still continue your movement. That’s amazing. Is that something you just learned from experience? It just sounds like, Hey, we ran into that problem. Here’s how we fix it. That’s what it sounds like. Is that how it happened? Yeah, is there is there a handbook for designing brand new robot has never existed before.
20:44
Weirdly, we did find a book about robotics for offshore wind turbine blade inspection and repair, which was quite useful for this project. But I know it is a kind of it was a, I think, when when the design was being conceived, that was always in the back of the mind to have that redundancy in place. And
21:02
just being aware that you know, you’re in a very hostile environment, you know, we’re going to be providing these robots to customers, you don’t want them to fail, you know, you need to have that confidence that it’s going to be able to achieve the task that it sent out there to do. And so having that sort of redundancy designed in from the beginning has kind of always been at the forefront of the engineers developing mind set really. And each leg has its own vacuum system, right? So it’s, you know, there’s not like, you know, you spring a leak, and the whole system goes out it but they all have their own independent one, right? That’s correct. Yes. And so each leg is independent vacuum, we monitor vacuum levels on each cup to give feedback direct to the operator about what’s going on, as it’s walking. So we’ve got visual indication of how well the vacuum levels are being achieved. Of course, I think all of us were pretty sorry. Go ahead, Alan.
21:52
Nonsense, I was gonna make a James Bond.
21:56
I think.
21:59
So what technology what is all the technology in that basic robot frame? What’s all in that case? So we’ve got a little onboard computer, which
22:12
controls the systems of the robot, but actually, a majority of the the space of the robot is space. And that has been designed as our payload platform. So that’s our loading bay for our tools. So the robot is essentially designed to give us
22:29
space within the robot that we can mount a variety of different inspection or repair tools within it. So there’s not a lot of stuff actually inside the robot apart from a few like PCBs and power distribution boards, and a small brain to control things, but majority of the area within the within the robot is just avoid for things. So how do you actually change tools? So say, you send up there with one tool?
22:56
And then you’re like, Hey, we’re getting when you’re going to pivot and do a different type of thing? I’m sure, obviously, right now, you’re probably focused on, we’re going up to do one type of thing, like you said, like you did your lightning receptor inspection. But is there a time in the future where it’s like, we’re gonna do X, Y, and Z, we’re gonna scan this thing, we’re gonna fix this thing. We’re gonna do that. I mean, is there a system? Is that where the human has to come in? And, you know, feed it the new tool? Or is there some way to how does the whole tooling system work? That’s really interesting to me. Yeah. So I think it’s gonna come in stages. So initially, when we’re still requiring people, we, I think we require people on site at the moment. So we can’t go
23:34
without people. But we actually need that at the moment for, for operating the robot. So the swapping the tools over will be a manual process initially, but it is essentially like a modular platform that we can just take the lid off, swap the LPS probe out for an ultrasonic inspection device, and away you go. And you’ve changed the toolset of the robot and its functionality. going ahead.
23:56
That is something that I can imagine being automated. So you can imagine having a suite of tools, the robot can pick and choose what it needs for. For a specific task. If it’s been requested to do a specific task on a blade, it can go choose the right tool set and go and perform that task. And what we’re doing at the moment, we’re doing things in stages. So the robot is capable of inspection, maintenance and repair. But we’re focusing on the inspection stuff. Now. So we’ve got those elements working. And the idea being that we’re using existing tools that exist that are used widely by the widely by the industry, and just adapt them to be used remotely by a robot. So the results we get don’t need to be questioned. You know, we’re using exactly the same equipment that the rope access stations use, we’re just using it remotely. We’re also actively working on a repair site, but that is a little bit more bespoke. So we’re working on developing our more of a bespoke modular set of tool sets for that, but it’s a case of where we can tools exist already. So let’s not reinvent the wheel. Let’s just adapt them and make them work on our robot remotely and just make everyone’s life easier. If you’ve got these two
25:00
You know, they can be used already on a robot without
25:04
any real problem. Yeah, cuz I, you know, in my mind, you know, like, there’s some of these amazing CNC machines where, you know, within this whole cabinet, you know, it’ll pick the pick the first tool, swap out the bit swap out the bit and just continues to do it’s like, um, it’s an amazing like symphony of. But I mean, do you see something like that maybe like down the road where you feel like you said, you can just, the bot has a certain amount of things that he can do on its own with and then there’s obviously others for that require human intervention, definitely, I think there’s, there’s definite, repetitive tasks on blades that, you know, you know, the certain tools you can be using for and they can be selected automatically. And with the repair side, we’re taking the approach of a more proactive
25:49
repair strategy. So not waiting for damage on blades to get to a level where it warrants sending a rope access crew, you know, if you start seeing leading edge erosion, for example, and early stage, treated, then treated, but it’s really easy to treat, when it’s quick, when you don’t have those aerodynamic losses, you don’t get in those impacts on your
26:08
and your energy production, you’re not going to get these huge repair campaigns. So that’s the philosophy that’s taken. So the size of the robot is size that you can easily fit outside of the the hatches of the roof of the muscles, for example, it’s a couple of Penny cases that an individual can use. So it’s quite a small device. But actually, in terms of what it can do. It’s It’s so capable. And we’re not talking about doing the big major repair campaigns, we’re talking about the early stage repairs, and the minor things that actually the road back just technicians don’t particularly enjoy doing. Because it’s a lot of paperwork for them. It’s quite boring, it’s monotonous for a robot monotony isn’t a problem. It’s more than happy just to carry on doing stuff. So Chris, can you explain how the ultrasonic inspection works with the robot? Because I think that technology is really transformative in the sense that I think the way your robot is set up, you can almost get an ultrasonic scan like you would in the factory or on the ground. But you can probably do it on turbine. So can you explain how that process works? What that looks like? Sure. So again, we’re not we’re not developing the equipment, we’re using industry standard tools. And so we effectively mount the the UT probe within the robot, the robot goes to the area of interest that wants to be scanned, and then the robot body itself controls the probes to scan over the surface. So we’ll deliver the coupling, and we’ll scan that area, collect that data, and then that data can be analyzed and understood so.
27:38
So it’s quite apt that you mentioned CNC, because the way that we control the robot is effectively like a CNC, we can control the body position in a very accurate way. So we can control how that probe is scan. So we can, you know, perform c scans on blood surfaces, and understand exactly what’s going on at the areas that are of potential damage, or if there’s any manufacturing defects, for example. So we can go there and scan it without the need of a human go in there. So I’m curious to hear about your time with ORE catapult. So, you know, they’ve they’re a pretty interesting, like sort of tech innovator, obviously, in the in the wind industry. They’ve got that demonstrator. And we’ve heard really great things about them. Obviously, with any technology company like yours, there’s just it takes time, right? You have to put the r&d hours in, you have to have great engineers, like it’s just not going to be a quick right out the door process. How important have they been to your company’s growth and the development of the of the bladebug? They’ve been essential, I would say. So I approached the ORE catapult when it was just a concept and a few mock up designs that I’ve made in a in a shed. And I sort of said, This is what I want to make. This is the I’ve got this idea. And they were like, this is really interesting. We’ve got people asking for solutions like this. So they were able to firstly install confidence that actually pursuing this isn’t
29:02
a bad idea is you know, there are people wanting it. And it’s a very valid approach to take. And secondly, they’ve been able to support every stage of development. So from a single vacuum cup, I’ve been able to test it on wind turbine blades and validate every part of the robot. I get a little legend leapfrog is what it did me to get you access to tools into facilities you couldn’t otherwise have access to. That’s it’s such a huge advantage for you. Yeah, so they give us access to all the tools and facilities that we would really struggle to get on otherwise. Well, I mean, there’s other the ORE catapult, as I understand it is is an organization that’s trying to promote the industry, right. So do they act as a? Yeah. Is it as a sounding board, they’re like you, you try this thing and then they come back with feedback from the different OEMs and like, we need the robot to do this. There’s elements of that but what they do have they’ve they’ve got a lot of market knowledge already. So they have
30:00
forums where they speak to owners and operators of wind farms, and they hear it from the horse’s mouth of problems that wind turbines are experiencing, and, you know, point of the blades. So they have, they’re able to sort of transmit that information sort of anonymously, because obviously, it’s still proprietary, but they can say these are the problems that have been experienced, and you know, they are looking for solutions that are going to make life easier for them is going to reduce their costs gonna increase efficiency. So it very much helps stare or give confidence that the direction that you’re you’re working in is the right one, that when you achieve your goals, there’ll be customers there who are willing to take it and they will, you know, it goes beyond that we’ve they’ve introduced us to a lot of owners, operators, independent service providers, and we’ve been able to engage in really early stage discussions, to again, to validate the concepts at an early stage, and we don’t go down the wrong road, and spend a lot of time developing something that nobody wants, that’s a gigantic advantage in terms of one limiting the amount of spins, you’re going to do on the design of the robot, because you don’t want to spend money where it’s not going to be effective for the end user. And two, I think it’s really hard to get unfiltered information from the winter manufacturers, they always get sort of filtered through a sales group or through some management group. So you don’t actually hear the real information of what’s happening out there. So to get all that information at one time, and unfiltered is a huge advantage. Because when you’re trying to bring a product to market, you know, how difficult that can be
31:35
that ORE catapult just kind of leapfrogs you to that place. Right? is is is that
31:43
an internal UK focus then is that is it mostly UK focus in terms of UK offshore focus for catapult that, and that’s where your direction has been? Or how how have they sort of kind of molded your company to be useful and productive in the next year or two in terms of actually making measurements on plates. I mean, I think it fundamentally is kind of UK focus just as the way it’s funded through the UK Government. But it’s, it’s with the big picture that actually offshore wind isn’t limited to one country or one region, it’s a global
32:19
market. Now, we’ve seen the forecasts for the US, as you know, in particular, you know, exploding over the sort of next 10 years. So the idea being that if we’ve got such a good resource at the moment in the UK, that if we can use this as a concept proven ground, then actually the world is our oyster, so to speak, it’s it can be developed and applied elsewhere. But what this does give us is the ability to validate and and show
32:47
how the robot performs and give us a sort of
32:51
a non biased opinion and, you know, give give the market an honest approach to to what companies are doing within the sector. And to have the information from the owners, operators and from wind farm manufacturers, is just it’s such an essential thing that we would really struggle to get that sort of clarity of data otherwise. Yeah, I mean, because this seems like one of those technologies, where the big companies, like you said, they are probably pretty aware that this is the future, right robotics in general, the drones, I mean, all the automation, all the automation for inspections, repairs all that. And so you wonder when there’s new technologies like yours, did these companies want to say, oh, let’s we’ll wait and see, because that’s going to hurt the long term development of that in the industry, right? Or if it’s like, Hey, we need to support these endeavors. Because we do want to see robotics take, you know, a major role in keeping workers safe and, you know,
33:48
eliminating rope access to as much of a degree as they can because of safety issues. And just so I mean, have you found that this sort of helps to bridge that gap where big companies are, like, we want this to happen, and therefore, you know, with our UI, and just, you know, where we know, they’re focusing on the right thing. So therefore, when these new technologies, even though they’re in their infancy, we feel comfortable supporting them, and going in, because if everyone’s like, a word, you know, maybe in five years, then it just will, it’ll never get going right? And never happened, right? So this is what this is where the recap spot really shines for us. So we’ve had so much positive feedback from, you know, OEMs, and owners and operators. But
34:32
in order for us to get on their wind turbine, it’s a big leap for them to have the confidence to put this Yeah, you know, this weird looking multi legged robot on their blade, but we can show them by having demonstrated it on the catapults facilities, that it’s safe to do so. And without that, that bridge between the two, it would be so much more difficult for us to to actually
34:58
show what we can do in order to give
35:00
You know, the owners and operators have the confidence to go Okay, well, we’ll give you a, you know, we can you can pilot trial on ours, which is what we’re hoping to do sort of later this year. But I think it would be so much more difficult without having demonstrated over the last, you know, we’ve been working with the casp now for over three years, and the the data that we’ve collected that we can show end users, we just wouldn’t be able to have that before. And and so, yeah, they bridge a gap that I don’t know how we would bridge it otherwise. Yeah. Cuz the drone thing was, you know, that was like a no brainer, right? And that’s becoming more and more prevalent every single day. You know, because at the end of the day, they’re just flying around. They’re not touching the turban, which I you know, I feel like that’s what you’ve mentioned as being one of the hangups we’re like, we don’t really want to put this on there, unless we’re pretty confident that it’s safe. And it’s not gonna Yeah, that just seems like that that crazy chicken and egg problem that you hear a lot of founders and inventors have, or like, I know this solution makes sense. But they will try like, or even like the in the job, the job markets like well, how can I get job experience? If no one will hire me? Because I have no job experience, right? That’s like your blade. Your bladebug is just like going door to door is that let me let me work on turbine like, oh, once you’ve worked on a turbine, you can work on a turbine. Okay.
36:19
Today, we take the drones as being second nature. But there was an evolution of drones that happened over five, six year time period to get to the point where they’re at today, why would we not have the same sort of
36:32
development process with robots we’re going to but those early acceptors, as early innovators that were willing to try something new are the ones are going to win in that situation long term. And you have to be able to think outside the box a little bit once in a while, particularly on blade maintenance. And this is where the the robot movement is going to really take effect, I think over the next probably this year and into 2022 is that we’re over that initial infancy stage where it feels weird. It’s normal. We’re starting to use robots in a lot of different areas around the world for all different kinds of products. Why not wind turbine? So I think, Chris, you got a really got a leg up, I think in a sense, because you you put the work in when things have been relatively quiet during COVID time, she just accelerated your programs. And I think you’re ready. And I think this summer is gonna be really interesting for you. Yeah, this summer, this summer is
37:25
this year already is going at a rate of knots that I can’t quite comprehend. And this summer, if some of the things that we’ve got in the pipeline,
37:35
come to fruition, it’s going to be really exciting for what we can achieve and sort of show the market what we can do. So let’s let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about wind technicians and controlling the robot. So we know we’ve had this discussion of a bunch, Alan, I recently, how do you see the future of the wind turbine technician job? I mean, do you feel like them using lots of different robotics is going to be just sort of like par for the course just like a carpenter uses, you know, a power drill on assault?
38:06
And how I mean, you’ve mentioned your robot being physically complex, you know, there’s a lot of moving parts, but it’s actually really, really simple to use. So what’s the learning curve? Like for someone who’s going to use a bladebug? And what is the jobs market look like for wind turbine text, and how does how does their their skill set need to evolve going forward.
38:28
So I think that there will always be a requirement for for rope access technicians, they’ll always be damaged to blades that the robot, it’s just too complex to have a robot that can solve those things. So there’ll always be a need for, you know, for the highly skilled robotics positions. What our robot affords, is, you can upskill the technicians that are performing the maintenance and turbines are ready. And with minimal training, they will be able to perform a number of tasks, you currently have to have a skilled rope access crew to perform. So if you wanted to check the lightning protection system with a blade, if you wanted to tackle early stage leading edge erosion, you suddenly can have your technician who is looking off the drive train, for example, who’s now able to form work on the blades, but actually not having to go out onto the blade face to do that. So we say as a general upscaling of the technicians that are there with the premise that actually the overall goal is to improve wind farms or wind turbines on a hole. So the overall goal is to make them better to improve the levelized cost of energy capture as much energy as you possibly can. And by taking a more proactive approach that you can do with a robot with people that you have out on site anyway, it just gives you that more opportunity to do those tasks. If for example, there’s a drop in the wind and there’s something that you’ve seen, or you can maybe tackle that now without the impact of, you know, having to shut down your turbine for a big campaign. You can just do things in a very opportunistic approach with technicians who essentially is just another tool for them. The robot is a tool that can be just taken out of the case.
40:00
And utilized for a job at hand. Yeah, that’s really interesting to think that, you know, one technician could go up and say, all right, I’ve got this list of things to do today. Here goes robot a, here goes robot B, you guys have your things, I’m gonna go do this. And then you just kind of monitor, it’s almost like he’s the supervisor, she’s the supervisor. And they’re just new members to the crew. I mean, is that kind of how you conceptualize it? I think so yeah. And especially, it’s worth pointing out that the dexterity of the robot means that we’re not limited to just external blade inspection. So there’s a whole raft of areas on it on a turbine that are awkward to get to. So internal blade inspections, for example, and working in the tower and around the cell. And our robot is actually capable of performing a variety of tasks. So we could be doing things concurrently. So if work is going on in the muscle, for example, then the robot can perform in other tasks, or, you know, it just enables a lot more work to be done or bookend together. So you’re trying to really optimize your time when you’re working on a turbine, if you’ve got it shut down for a specific task. And then specifically, you said, the the playbook can be controlled by an Xbox controller. Is that, is that right? Yeah, so we use a, we were using Xbox controller for a number of reasons. One, the engineers that we have, it’s a very well designed controller with lots of buttons. And we need that ability to change
41:24
options for the robot to do different things. And it’s just a very well designed, comfortable, ergonomic thing to use. So again, this is trying to utilize why try and reinvent something which has already been designed very well.
41:38
And robust, and it’s so familiar to so many people, so they can hold it and it feels natural, it feels normal to its operate, you’re not trying to instill a new method of operating a robot is just it’s almost like playing the game. I feel like you need to build on some Cheat Codes like in the Tesla’s or left, right, left, right up down ABC and then like, does a backflip on the on the on the J? I’m pretty sure they exist in the code already. So
42:07
and then long term?
42:09
How do you see these getting up there? So right now they need to be hoisted up, you know, through the tower. Or take me through the process of how you get a blade book up one to the Blake, as we’ve talked about this before, my long term vision because you know, we need to continue to keep we can’t make everything robotic. So I feel like we should you know, use bald eagles condors train these creatures and keep them you know, we don’t want them to get to idle. But you know, mix nature here. So we throw it on a condors back it takes everything to sell. Anyway, I’m taking notes I’m taking. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that. It means a lot.
42:44
But how do they get up there? I mean, is there a potential in the future where a drone flies up into place where again, you kind of have like the symphony of, of different technologies, exactly that. So the current first port of call that we’ve gone to is, what we’re trying to do is so complex anyway, we’re not trying to develop another method of of getting onto bait. So we have rope access technicians who assist the robot currently, this is mainly just for in case something goes wrong, because we’re still in the development stages, really. And so we utilize the we get it out on top of the hatch, it gets wheeled to the front of the spinner lower down and attaches to the blade. In the future. There’s so many different methodologies. So offshore, for example, it’s different to how we could do it onshore. So it onshore, you’ve got different areas that you know, there’s different methods that you could use, which you haven’t got the ability to do offshore, because you’ve got no land around you. So to get it onshore, there’s different approaches to offshore, but in the future. And actually, we were working on elements of this at the moment is about drone deployment. So the whole premise being getting to and from that point of interest as quickly as possible. And
43:58
it’s one area that we’re working on, and one area that we see as as a possible significant game changer in in how we were able to perform these tasks and blades. Yeah, well, what does the business look like two or three years from now? Is the goal to sell robots to repair companies to sell robots to the OEMs to so robots to the owners? Are they going to try to do you thinking about deploying a robot per turban?
44:26
What does that look like? Is it like a lease structure or rent structure a sales structure on the business side? What is that proposed model look like?
44:36
Yes.
44:38
All of the above really. So. We are we are fundamentally we’re a robotics company. We’re not looking at becoming a service arm. I think initially we’ll be doing elements of that, you know, just to get it into people’s hands will be showing and demonstrating. But the idea is very much to to sell or lease the robot to the owners operators to the OEM.
45:00
And to the independent service riders because it’s going to be a mixture of the three, essentially, the OEMs often have long term service agreements with the owners and operators. And so we can either sell it to them or to the independent service providers, which are often contracted or subcontract subcontracted out by those OEMs, to perform the specific, say, blade related tasks. But what we’re also seeing is owners and operators becoming a lot more aware of their assets and a lot more aware of their blades in particular. And so they’re not just necessarily taking the, you know, the feedback from an independent service provider, they want to double check and actually make sure that what they’ve been told is correct. And so we see
45:44
all three of those sectors as being customers of ours, and either working together, or, you know, just sort of comparing results from, say, another process or method that’s been used
45:56
to generate data for them. So question in terms of the robots and how it’s going to be installed, are you are you envisioning one robot per turbin? Or one robot per site? What are the thoughts? What’s the thoughts around that? I think ideally, it would be resident robots per per turbine,
46:15
able to perform like tasks as in when is required. But the other vision as well as is sort of like a fleet of robots on a wind farm, which can be deployed from like a central hive or from like, a central point within the wind farm, that, that they’re able to be deployed readily and available, you know, to the blades as and when it’s required, really. So you’re saying like a robot would basically it just stays with that turbine. And when they need to do something that it just does its thing, just like in like a habit, a toolbox? at the site? Exactly. Yeah. Okay, that’s interesting idea. Because I think right now everyone thinks of, you got to call someone, they got to bring it over, and they got to do all their thing. And I think that is, in a lot of ways, like what you do with a drone company, or whatever. But that idea of having at a site, there’s just a team of drones, a team of robots, and then a team of humans, that’s going to help do it all, you know, get them get them all, you know, make sure they’re not slacking off sleeping in too late. Right? Yeah. But that’s an interesting concept where they’re getting there. And and using one you need to use them. I mean, especially offshore, you know, the the turbines are getting so large and so isolated from from sure that actually one of the biggest risks and costs is is getting to and from the turbine. So if you don’t if you can mitigate that, by not having to do that, then I think that’s, that’s another avenue that we’re very keen to sort of explore and understand. Oh, sure. Sure. I think that makes total logical sense. Because it particularly in the United States and offshore of UK, obviously, the number of turbines we’re going to be installing off the eastern coast of United States is going to be in the 1000s. So there’s just no way that you can maintain that. And unless you have one robot per turbine, you’re just going to need it. So is there a Data Cloud piece to this business? Because of all the information that can be coming off these robots and all the sensors? How does how does that data get managed? Yeah, so the data is one thing that is, is really interesting, it’s something that’s
48:20
we’re aware that there’s so many different data systems out there and management platforms, that we’ve taken the conscious decision that we’re not going to be developing our own Ladybug data management system, off the bat, you know, this is, what we will do is make it very easy to transfer. So we’ll be able to transfer data really easily to any one of those those data platforms that exist already with the idea of being that more data is better. So if you have more data, you can make more informed decisions about your assets. And so we’ll just make a very simple API interface to to put our data into the system. And so you just got a better set of data sets for each blade or for each turbine for wind farm. And it just helps make decisions more informed and make the right choice in the day. So that’s how we see ourselves as a we’ll be collecting the data, but we’ll just be passing it on to,
49:13
you know, the relevant data structures that exist in place already. And how networkable
49:19
are the robots? Like, can you control the robot from like, there’s a robot in Iowa and the United States? Are you able to control the robot from the UK? Is it networkable? In that sense, you can access it via the internet, or do you have to be on site on site?
49:37
I mean, in theory, it’s it’s network or so. But that is one of the key benefits that we’ll be able to perform tasks remotely with experience from afar. So for the for the non destructive testing, for example, the ultrasonics if you wanted to get live data from an MDT expert, they wouldn’t necessarily have to be on site. They could be sitting in their office, in a warm surrounds on shore.
49:59
analyze that data there and then without having to be there. So that that is one of the ways that we see the robot being operated in the future for sure. So does that essentially set you up as a global business from the start, right? Because if you have the ability to talk to a robot remotely, that may be running until a bit of difficulty in terms of what they’re trying to measure, or that you want to pull data off and have somebody look at that data immediately, because you want to get repaired on the next day, that functionality, and that interconnectivity doesn’t just really explode the business in a sense, and that it can be used anywhere, anytime, and that there’s always someone to call or someone that can connect up and help with problems that exists in the field. And it does, I think, when we started, I think we, I think I preached it is sort of the UK is our entry market, just because it’s, it’s sure close to home.
50:53
But actually, the market itself is global. And the owners and operators are aren’t necessarily geographically defined to countries and regions. So we expect that once we go commercial that it will, it will Fingers crossed, it will explode sort of robots, but that the market will explode for us on the web?
51:18
Yeah, well, yeah, I think I think that’s gonna happen, right? That’s, that’s an eventuality you have to plan for? Because I do think that’s where you’re headed. And in terms of a sort of a company standpoint, then how do you prepare for that? And you kind of know, that’s coming? How do you prepare for that internally? So you when you’re getting phone calls from Brazil, or Central America or, you know, people like us, the United States? How do you handle all that? Because I do think that’s coming for you. Yeah, so this is this is one of the things we’ve we’ve just secured our first
51:48
investment, equity offers private equity investment, and we’re doing a much larger one later on in the year. And again, it’s the the investment is for that ramp up for commercial activity. So it is growing a team getting the right people with the experience in the right place. Sure, as you say, we’re going to have to very, very quickly shift from a sort of r&d approach where it’s been, you know, we’ve got time to develop things to, you’ve got customers on the line calling problems or, and we need to have those, we both need to have more resource to deal with that. So we’re looking at raising in order to facilitate the growth of the business to to cover those areas. And that seems really complex to go from, you know, what I assume is just like a bespoke robot, where you’re probably manufacturing a lot of these complex parts, CNC, you know, CNC machining them in house, to suddenly scaling that up. And, I mean, that is probably gonna require a lot of tooling. And you know, I mean, do you get a factoring? Yeah. Is that something that seems like a really scary step? Like you said, it’s gonna need a lot of money and a lot of the right people to get to that, you know, like that mass production stage? Yeah. So it’s one of these things that we’ve been, again, with the things like the redundancy in the robot has also been designed with elements of design for manufacture. So it is a prototype, but it’s, it’s, you know, we could manufacture these prototypes, essentially, in small batch volumes, without too much pain before having to do a sort of redesign for sort of mass manufacture. So that has been designed, knowing that actually, this this, this version of the robot that we’ve got currently might be the one that we have to produce, you know, a number of and so whilst it’s not fully refined for manufacturer, it’s it’s definitely that is an option for sure. Yeah. And that’s, that’s, I feel like that’s a really interesting problem, because probably at first, you’re like, we just want to get this to do what we want it to do. We don’t care how we get it to do it, right? You just make the parts that make it work. And then as it starts to go, you have to say, Okay, well, the way we made this one part is just not going to be feasible for you know, any kind of scale. So how can we change that? And was there a way? I assume there’s a lot of that in the early stages? 100%? Yes, there’s, there’s lots of that. And to be honest, there’s probably some of that still, in the design of the current robot.
54:08
And this goes to, again, the investment to get the right people on board, or there are external companies that specialize in in turning prototypes into manufacturable design. So it’s about finding the right people to get them either in house or get the resources and all that we can facilitate external companies to take that design to the next sort of stage for us. I think one of the big things with the wind industry that’s interesting is that everything seems to be one. Everyone wants to make everything to last right? You want to install anything on a blade you want to last 20 years, which seems to make sense. Everyone likes buying quality, whether it’s in your home, whether it’s your vehicle, we want everything to last a long time. But if we get to the point where you can Repair and Replace things really, really easily and cheaply, is that gonna actually have the opposite effect.
55:00
where some of these may be like power curve upgrades where you could, you know, put vortex generators on a blade, rather than having to make them super robust. And this really rigorous installation progress or process or the last 10 years, if you could just do it so easily by deploying a robot and you know, one person controls it, that they could do it every two years, you could make them cheaper. And you know, me, do you see, do you see that sort of opposite trend maybe happening in the future where repairs become less costly, easier, faster to the point where they can spend less and have more almost like disposable sort of repair and replacement options?
55:39
I think I don’t necessarily like the term disposable in the sense that I think things should be designed well. But I do see the benefit is, for example, if you design something now, in 10 years time, that’ll be outdated, there might be a step change in voltage generator design or something like that. So if you’re able to have that ability to change things really easily and cheaply.
56:01
Yes, it means you can design things potentially for a shorter timescale. But with the idea being that you’re not replacing light for like you’re replacing it with a with a with an upgrade of an upgrade. So things can be improved along the way. So when you do go back to do your simple install, you’re actually doing more than just,
56:19
you know, replacing your voltage generators, you’re putting an improvement on, which again, the whole ethos of making wind turbines better at what they do, sort of helps. And with the leading edge repair, for example, I think, whilst the holy grail is a one time solution, I think we’re far from that. And I think the reality is that blades need to be maintained regularly, they are in a very harsh environment, they perform an incredible job. And I just don’t think it’s that much of a problem. If you if you need to repair them every couple of years, you can do that very quickly and easily using, you know, a device or device in particular, to do that. Yeah, that makes sense. It’s such an interesting thing to think about, because like I said, everyone wants to go quality repair the leading edge for forever, right coated in granite, so it’s never gonna happen again.
57:06
But the opposite like he said, I think that’s a really interesting idea that if we get to the point where there’s nothing, there’s nothing wrong, it’s not a big deal to just work on them every every so often. And that’s just like part of it just like any other thing, don’t you think Dan is like general maintenance. And we haven’t thought about winter and blades in that way. In fact, there’s a lot of research and meetings and conferences talking about making blades last 20 years in the in the difficulty in doing that. And the added cost is going to be involved in that. I do think the other option is and probably the more efficient cost wise option is to provide general repairs and to keep on it. But the cost, the cost driver right now is just having three technicians on site, particularly offshore, and the cost of that versus something robotic, which can do most of those repairs. And just in keep the technology and the cost of the blades relatively stable, which is a barrier to entry is is the price of the blade. So keeping those blade costs relatively stable over time, but then adding that discrete element of robotics and low cost, repetitive repairs. To maintain the blade through the lifetime, I think what you’re going to see, Chris is that the operators are going to have a schedule, like when they buy a winter, but they’re gonna have a schedule of when they’re going to be doing that your parents are going to know it because they’ve been accumulating the data. And they’re going to know what you’re five, I want to put on vortex generators, year seven, I may want to do a leading edge repair, and just build it into the model built into the cost model. But the driver right now is is that unknown cost of the of the show the technicians how bad it’s going to be versus robotic option, which opens up all sorts of opportunities to lower cost and provide a more consistent result. I don’t see how that doesn’t work. Right. I think I think that that’s why you’re such a sweet spot right now is that that industry, this whole industry is going to evolve into your technology. Do you see it happening that way? Or I do. So I think that 75% of the work in blazes is unplanned maintenance. And I’d like to get that on its head. So it’s 75% planned maintenance. And that just makes life that makes budgeting that makes forecasting so much easier. And so if you if you change that around, and you just know exactly, you know, each year or every two years, you’re just going to be as you say, general maintenance on your blades, they are something Oh, they’re the engine of the of the turbine. You just want to look after them. And there’s I don’t think there’s any harm in saying that, that you need to give them a bit of care and attention and then not just leave them for 20 years and expect them to be performing at the same level as when they were originally installed. Yeah, and I think you’re right also in this in the sense that over that 20 year lifespan there’s gonna be other aerodynamic improvements. You know, Nicholas go during that power curve and all the other wind turbine aerodynamics companies always come with these new technologies. You’re going to be able to improve that over time and it just part of the process of why would you want to try to design the ultimate blade when you know the torque
1:00:00
Your lifespan, you’re gonna be able to get more ATP out of it anyway, because everybody’s working on it. So the robot provides that platform to increase the blade efficiency over the lifetime, which is unheard of. But I think that’s the only way it happens. Don’t you see it happening kind of that way? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and there’s corollaries everywhere. I mean, I was having this conversation a couple years ago, because I, I am still I’m an advocate of leasing cars in a lot of situations, because I was like, why would I want to buy a car today in 2019? When in five years, the car might drive me around, it might be you know, like electric. I mean, like, technology’s changing so fast, like, why would I want to own like, even like a new camera or a computer, like they’re changing so fast, where it doesn’t make sense to me to buy a $5,000, top of the line camera, when, in two years, for half the price, you’re gonna get more than that. Like, it’s, it’s crazy. And like you said, it’s right. It’s the same thing where what you install on the blade today, my pale in comparison to something just three years from now, where it makes sense to just spend a little bit and wait and then get the next upgrade and get the next upgrade, rather than, like you said, try to design the penultimate thing today and for the future, because technology’s changing so fast. Yeah, we’re never going to get there an ultimate blade, they’ll never be an ultimate blade. And I think the the technology, and we should have learned something from just watching general industry, like the automotive industry think Tesla’s sort of doing the same thing where a lot of upgrades to software, the fundamentals are all there. But to improve the efficiency of the vehicle as a software upgrade, I think the similar thing exists here and sort of robot robots and robot repair is that software upgrade over time, it will be and I think, when as we get closer to that being reality, and I think 2021 2022 is going to be those years, I think the owners or operators, you know, it’d be really conscientious of that. And I know that I like Bjorn hedges and other people we’ve talked to over time are definitely thinking that way. They’re thinking out of the box a lot. It’s just making that transition. And hopefully this year for Chris is the year that things really get going.
1:02:04
Yeah, fingers crossed. And again, that the upgrade has an interest in not just for blades, but for the robot as well, the fact that we’ve designed it in this modular system, it’s not it’s not this, this is it’s, you know, the tools are completely upgradeable, with new tools or sensors come to market, it’s very easy to upgrade the robot, it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s future proof by any means. But it’s definitely got elements of that, that we can make it it’s very easy to bring up to date with, you know, simple, either software advances, which we’ll be doing or with different hardware or tool sets that come short to market. And what we have seen actually is lots of interest from people who have tools ready and waiting to go and need a device such as ours to use them
1:02:48
remotely. Oh, sure. So we see you know, that we see that the toolset becoming such a, one of the key elements of this where it is, you know, new things can keep on being ready to be used via the blue book robot. One, you’ll probably have that effect where, you know, there’s the early adopters who some people are leery and some people like yes, you know, let’s do it. Let’s be an early adopter. But then what sort shortly after that, it’s like everyone else is like, Oh, crap, this is a really proven thing. And we’re behind, like, how can we get out, we got to catch up, right? Where every, you know, like, if you’re a your repair company and down the street, your competitor has a whole fleet of robots, you’re like, you know, we got to get up to speed. So you’ve probably seen that like, you know, exponential growth, at some point, we’re seeing that. So speaking, like to say drone companies in particular.
1:03:42
There are so many drone companies out there, that they’re now wanting to try and differentiate themselves. And one way they can differentiate themselves is by offering more than just a visual inspection. So if you can offer a sort of a more of a turnkey service, where you do the inspection and be able to follow up with detailed inspection and repair, that makes you stand out more from your competitors. And so I think you’re right, I think the early adopters are the ones who are going to significantly benefit from, you know,
1:04:09
taking that that step into the more advanced technology that’s, that’s coming. Well, I’m just learning how to do it, you know, as well, like, because it’s going to take a whole team to get on board technicians are gonna have to get comfortable with it, there’s gonna be a, you know, a some growing pains and learning curve with, you know, what can we do? Where is it better, like, just how do we, it doesn’t seem like a quick thing. It’s not like just grabbing a new, you know, swapping your Milwaukee for a Makita you know, drill it’s, there’s gonna be a lot of thing. It’s like you said, it’s almost like integrating a new team member onto your team more than just like a handheld power drill. So to have the whole systems everything up and running would take some time where it seems like being an early adopter would make would get you just again, just get you ahead of the curve. And exactly, it’s about getting the right early adopters, the early adopters that are aware of the shortcomings often
1:05:00
Sort of prototype robots. So things don’t necessarily go 100%. Right, which I’m sure they’re not going to go every time that it’s not a black mark against you. It’s just this is a learning curve. And you can see the end goal. And it’s having it’s having that that sort of friendly, early adopter approach where they, they’re there to help and not to just sort of, Oh, well, that didn’t do exactly as it was meant to do. So that that’s that, yeah, we’re looking for those and find them a few of those at the moment, which is really exciting. Yeah, people who want it to work, and then they understand that it’s not gonna be perfect At first, they need it to work, right? I mean, I think the accountants and the on the operation side or the winter admins need this to work because it’s going to lower the overall cost of, of providing electricity. And that’s where everybody’s going. So, and a lot of times we get, I’m one of the following this all the time, engineering size side, this is really cool. And you know, this is where it’s going. But a lot of times, it’s the accountants that are driving what happens next. And once and I know this is going to happen once Chris shows that this is going to save the money over time. This is a slam dunk, you know, when you get into a boardroom, and they say, can we save a half million dollars, a million dollars a year and sort of downtime? Yeah, and that’s a no brainer, right. And that’s, that’s where it’s the flood is going to come. So there’s early adopters are really critical, right. But once the accountants figure out that there’s money to be had, then it just explodes. And that’s where this is going. There’s no doubt about that. Exactly. And I think if it doesn’t save money, that that’s that is the problem. So despite the health and safety benefits, it does come down to numbers at the end, and people will want to see that cost benefit of the robot. And right i think that’s, you know, one of the the sort of the key features here, as we go forward for any robotic company, you have to make it financially worth your while, there’s a lot of cool technology. But if it doesn’t protect return, provide a return on investment, then it’s not worth that initial investment. I think robots are going to show themselves to be worth that investment. That’s not even really a discussion point right now. It’s just getting some data on the books or the the accountant types can and the business types can look at that and go Yeah, okay, I see that I cut my costs down, I see that I took shorter downtime, I see that my blades are better off long term, 10 years, 15 years down the line, then then I think it really ramps up in terms of robotics. Well, Chris, where can people follow up with you? If they want to learn more about blade ball, your company? Where can they find you on the web and on social media and all that? So yeah, we have bedbug co.uk website, where we’ll be sort of posting updates, we have our LinkedIn, which is always good for finding out what we’re currently doing. That’s probably one of our main social media outlets. We’re on Twitter as well.
1:07:41
Look for bladebug limited out there. But we’ll be we’ll be trying to do a big campaign going forward when we start releasing some more of the exciting stuff that we’ve been working on this year. And getting out into the sort of public to get excited about as excited about it as we are. So for everyone out there listening or watching you know, we always put the links to our guests. You know, website, social media handles all that stuff in the description below. So whether you’re on YouTube, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever, just check out the description of the show. And you can click right through to learn more about blade blogging yet, Chris, we deftly want to see more of the video and stuff. I mean, you guys have such cool technology where and just the views from a top those things. I mean, come on. It’s the best. So look forward to that. But Chris, thanks again for coming on the show is a great conversation. We really appreciate your time. pleasure. Thank you so much for hosting me. All right, well that’s it for this episode of The uptime wind energy podcast. Want to thank again our guest, Chris Cieslak from bladebug, and be sure to subscribe to the show. Follow up with bladebug on the web and share it with a friend you know, great conversations like today deserve to be shared. So we’ll see you here next time on The uptime wind energy podcast.
1:08:59
operating a profitable wind farm is all about mitigating costs, minimizing risks and being efficient with maintenance repairs and upgrades. It’s incredibly expensive to send a team of rope access technicians up tower to make even simple repairs. We also know how costly lightning damage can be requiring inspection repairs and downtime for even minor lightning strikes. Maximize the time efficiency of your techs and prevent future lightning damage by installing our striketape LPS upgrade the next time your crews are going up on ropes. Learn more in today’s show notes or visit us on the web at weatherguardwind.com
