🥇 GERMANY'S FIRST! - Power Grid Inspected by Airship-Drone

Airships have the potential for much longer flight times than multirotor drones. This and other advantages open new opportunities for the inspection of long range infrastructure like power lines. - That’s the hypothesis we based our business on.

Power grid operator Netze BW GmbH gave us the chance to prove this hypothesis. Believing in our idea, they teamed up with Enpulse , the venture studio of EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG, and planned a pilot project with us.

This

pilot was designed to answer a basic question: Can an airship even maneuver and take pictures like a multirotor drone? In other words: Can it follow a pre-defined flight path and take high resolution images in a stable, fully automated way?

Last Friday we gave an answer to this question. We programmed our airship to fly along a stretch of 3 power poles and take images of every structural detail. Back and forth, the route covered a total distance of 1.5 km. The wind was blowing at up to 14 km/h. Our team was well prepared but honestly also quite a bit nervous.

Many eyes (and camera lenses) were on us and on the airship flying along the power lines. Stakeholders from Netze BW GmbH, Enpulse and EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG and also journalists were present. Although several hundred meters away, they could clearly witness this giant ship navigate its way from one pole to the next, then stop perfectly steady to take pictures from the isolators, nuts and bolts and then move on - all fully automated.

It all went really well and our anxiety turned into a proud happiness when the airship arrived back, passing over the amazed crowd to come down for its landing.

This one day was such a long and adventurous journey in the making. We feel a deep gratitude for all the wonderful people and organizations that helped roboloon get here. Among these are the TTI Technologie-Transfer-Initiative GmbH, Startup Campus 0711, the Uni Stuttgart iFR at the University of Stuttgart and many talented students.