Wind turbine inspection intelligence for energy asset operators

Manual wind turbine inspection is operationally expensive, inconsistent, and difficult to scale. Rope-access and helicopter-based inspection programs are labour-intensive, weather-dependent, and expose personnel to significant safety risk while producing data that is manually reviewed, inconsistently recorded, and slow to translate into maintenance action.

Orb replaces manual inspection workflows with a governed, repeatable, and auditable inspection program from autonomous drone mission planning through to AI-powered fault detection, structured condition assessment, and automated integration with existing asset management and maintenance systems.

Governed inspection programs at wind portfolio scale

Orb's mission planning and autonomous flight capabilities are configured to the specific requirements of wind turbine inspection accounting for blade geometry, turbine height, rotor orientation, image overlap requirements, resolution targets, and environmental constraints including restricted airspace. Inspection profiles are standardized by asset type and blade model, ensuring repeatable data quality across turbines, sites, and inspection cycles year-on-year.

Fleet-level orchestration supports multi-site programs across distributed wind portfolios and geographically dispersed drone teams without requiring manual coordination at each site.

Automated fault detection across component and fault classes

Cortex, Unleash live's computer vision intelligence engine, automatically analyses captured imagery to detect faults and condition changes across wind turbine component and fault classes identifying leading edge erosion, surface cracking, delamination, lightning strike damage, and soiling, among others. Detection results are structured and aligned to maintenance workflows, giving asset management and operations teams the specific, actionable intelligence required to prioritize repair and maintenance scheduling without manual image review.

Operators have reduced overall inspection costs by up to 80% per year across a 250 MW wind farm, replacing manual inspection methods with automated, governed detection programs that scale across the full wind portfolio.

From fault detection to maintenance action without manual data transfer

Orb integrates via APIs with asset management, work scheduling, and reporting platforms including SAP, Maximo, and PowerBI, routing fault detections, condition assessments, and inspection records directly into existing maintenance workflows. Inspection findings trigger work orders and asset register updates without manual data entry, reducing the time from detection to maintenance action and eliminating duplicate reporting.

A structured audit trail for inspection compliance

Every Orb inspection program produces a complete, traceable inspection record, from mission configuration through capture to detection output and maintenance action. Standardized capture profiles, version-controlled model outputs, and structured condition reports give asset management and compliance functions the documentation required to demonstrate inspection governance across the full wind portfolio.