Clobotics acquires AtSite to expand wind service portfolio

Global market leader in visual inspection and artificial intelligence acquires Danish wind turbine blade specialist company to better meet customers’ needs for automation and intelligent maintenance.

Wind turbines that are installed are getting bigger and bigger and the portfolio of older people is gradually growing both offshore and onshore. Therefore, drone inspection has become an integral part of maintenance in this growing segment of renewable energy. Clobotics Holdings Ltd. has acquired AtSite to make it a wholly owned subsidiary of Clobotics Group. The acquisition brings two industry-leading companies together and can accelerate artificial intelligence-based solutions to the rapidly growing digitalization of a global wind service market.

AtSite is the market leader in visual inspection of wind turbine blades. Since 2013, the company has inspected thousands of wind turbine blades, foundations and towers for customers all over the world. Their use of dedicated wind turbine blade specialists has resulted in a unique lead position used by the wind farm owner and manufacturers.

Clobotics, with branches in Seattle and Shanghai, has a strong history in automated drone inspections of wind turbines, image recognition software, artificial intelligence and analysis software.

“AtSite has always focused on the use of the best technology / software to optimize wind turbine service and maintenance,” says Mads Obling Rasmussen, CEO of AtSite. “As part of Clobotics, our 100% fully automatic drone, advanced artificial intelligence and the best data processing will give us a huge head start in giving our customers insight into the condition of their wind turbines.”

Clobotics has developed “Windspector 3.0” which is a complete system from fully automatic drone to decision basis for service strategy. The drone can be started by a service technician and flies around the mill where 3D model and high-resolution images are collected fully automatically. The inspection takes less than half an hour, during which all surfaces of the 3 giant wind turbine blades are inspected. The images of the wings are automatically uploaded to the cloud, analysis takes place via cloud computing where damage is marked and report is available on the intuitive customer portal within 24 hours.

The Danish ambassador in Shanghai, Jakob Linulf, has mentioned the acquisition, “Denmark has a long-term plan for green transition. It has transformed Denmark from a place where all energy used to be imported to today being energy dependent. In addition, Denmark has also become a leader in green conversion in both Europe and the rest of the world. Denmark recently passed a climate law to reduce emissions by 70% in 2030. Clobotic’s acquisition in Denmark is an obvious opportunity to maintain its leading position in this particular market where Chinese leading AI technology (artificial intelligence) is integrated with Denmark’s leading specialists.

As part of the acquisition, AtSite has changed its name to Clobotics A / S and will function as the European office for Clobotics’ wind department. The entire Danish team will remain in the company and service current and new customers.

About Clobotics

Clobotics is the market leader in AIoT (artificial Intelligence of Things) solutions within wind energy and the retail industry. Clobotics provide end-to-end solutions where image recognition, artificial intelligence / machine learning and data analysis software and hardware are included. By using these, one can optimize time-intensive processes, increase efficiency and thereby increase earnings through the use of real-time data insights and analytics. Clobotics was on CNBC’s “Start up top 100 list” in 2018 and was highlighted as an important provider of computer vision solutions for the industrial sector in the latest Bloomberg NEF report on computer vision. See more at www.clobotics.com

About AtSite

AtSite, based in Esbjerg, Denmark, was founded in 2013 by Mads Obling Rasmussen and has since been one of the world’s leading inspection companies in offshore wind turbines in particular. The company focuses primarily on using innovative solutions and software to reduce work at height and other risky areas. In addition, AtSite has developed a number of solutions within drone technologies and software for automatic image data processing.