Aerones focusses on wind turbine maintenance and inspections and has been developing AI and robotics to create greater efficiencies. It claims that its customers that represent over 50 per cent of the world’s wind power capacity, including operators such as NextEra, GE, Vestas, Enel and Siemens Gamesa.

The company has now raised an additional $60 million from Activate Capital and S2G Investments to further develop and deploy its solutions as the company seeks to scale up and meet demand.

The growth in wind turbines has created a significant, and growing, market for inspection, cleaning (blades become covered with insects and dirt) and repair. Robots can operate faster that humans and potentially keep the turbines turning for longer.

As an example, the company recently released its snappily titled Crawler Gen 3, a blade internal inspection crawler with 3D LiDAR, 360-degree 5K camera, and 61MP root zone lens that can assess a blade whist the operators remain inside a van.

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