Aerones

Aerones is a Latvian robotics company that maintains wind turbines with robots instead of people on ropes. Its remotely controlled systems inspect, clean, test and repair turbine blades — work that used to mean technicians hanging at dangerous heights.

Aerones was the first company in the world to offer these services with robots. Maintenance is safer and faster, and turbines spend far less time standing still.

My role

I worked at Aerones for two years, from 2018 to 2020. When I joined, the company was building what was then the world’s largest drone and looking for the right use for it — from firefighting to carrying heavy loads in the mountains. The breakthrough came when the focus turned to wind turbines.

For one of those years I led the R&D department, while the robotic maintenance system was being developed from scratch. Together with the team, we took it from the first concept through a series of working prototypes, tested on real turbines, that could:

• Test lightning protection systems
• Scan blades with ultrasound
• Clean drainage holes
• Wash blades
• Repair leading edges: grinding, surface preparation and applying protective coatings

It was one of the most rewarding periods of my career: a small team, a problem nobody had solved before, and a product that went on to change how the industry maintains its turbines.