ATLANTIS Coastal Testbed: A near-real playground for the testing and validation of robotics for O&M

Abstract

The demonstration of robotic technologies in real environments is essential for technology developers and end-users to fully showcase the benefits of theirs solutions, and contributes to the promotion of the transition of inspection and maintenance methodologies towards automated robotic strategies. However, before allowing technologies to be demonstrated in real, operating offshore wind-farms, there is a need to de-risk the technology, to ensure its safe operation offshore.As part of the ATLANTIS project, a pioneer pilot infrastructure, the ATLANTIS Test Centre, was installed in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. This infrastructure will allow the demonstration of key enabling robotic technologies for offshore inspection and maintenance. The Test Centre is composed of two distinct testbeds, and a supervisory control centre, enabling the de-risking, testing, validation and demonstration of technologies, in both near-real and real environments.This paper presents the details of the Coastal Testbed of the ATLANTIS Test Centre, from implementation to available resources and infrastructures and environment details.