The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult invites you to a two-hour virtual event on Thursday 15th July (from 10am) that will report on the final results of the MIMRee project, the most ambitious robotics project in offshore wind.

Over the past two years, a consortium of leading technology developers and researchers aimed to build a fully autonomous robotic inspect-and-repair system for offshore wind farms. The lead partners will explain what MIMRee has achieved and its implications for the future of working in extreme environments, offshore wind and beyond.

There will be presentations on each aspect of the MIMRee scenario and a final panel discussion where you will be welcome to put your questions.

AGENDA

10.00 – 10.10: Introduction

Alex Louden, Innovation Manager at the ORE Catapult, introduces the MIMRee project and partners and shows the project’s visualization of an autonomous inspect-and-repair mission

10.10 – 10.30: Why robotics are essential to Net Zero

ORE Catapult’s Hamish MacDonald (Senior Engineer) and Ben George (Operations & Maintenance Centre of Excellence Lead) discuss why MIMRee is needed and its significance for the offshore renewables sector.

10.30 – 10.50: Mission Planning

Sara Bernardini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Royal Holloway -The University of London, presents the mission planning approaches she has used in creating the MIMRee system and Human-Machine Interface.

10.50 – 11.05: Autonomous mothership and moving-blade scanner

Barry Connor, Technology and Innovation Manager at Thales UK, introduces a major component of MIMRee - the autonomous mothership – and reveals their novel camera inspection system that is capable of scanning moving wind farm blades for defects.

11.05 – 11.25: Aerial robotics for inspection and transportation

- Dr Tom Richardson, Senior Lecturer in Flight Mechanics at the University of Bristol

- Kevin Lind, Co-Founder, Perceptual Robotics

- Dr Simon Watson, Senior Lecturer in Robotics, University of Manchester

11.25 - 11.45: Blade crawling robot

- Dr Sina Sareh, Academic Leader at the Royal College of Art Robotics Laboratory

- Dr Atif Syed, CEO and Founder, Wootzano

- Chris Cieslak, Founder, BladeBUG Ltd (guest speaker)

11.45 - 12.10: Discussion - What does MIMRee mean for offshore wind and other extreme working environments?

Alex Louden will take questions from the audience for the MIMRee partners

12.10: Wrap Up

Please note this session will be recorded.