1. How far along the blade does it get, and how is that measured?
The reach decides which failure modes the robot can see. Ask for reach as a percentage of blade length from the root, and ask on which blade types it was measured, because a 60 m blade and a 100 m blade narrow at different points. A number without a blade type is a marketing figure. Detectra reaches up to 80 % of the blade length from the root.
2. How does it get back?
A robot that stalls inside a blade is a serious problem, and a blade with a robot stuck in it is worse than a blade with no inspection. Ask what happens when the drive fails or the link drops. A good answer includes a mechanical retrieval that does not depend on the electronics. Detectra drives back to the root or is pulled back on its cable.
3. What does it weigh, and what does the kit look like on site?
The crawler is lifted through the root hatch by hand and carried up the tower. Ask for the weight of the crawler and the number and size of the cases. Detectra weighs 3.7 kg, measures 350 × 250 × 200 mm, and the whole kit, crawler, tablet, cable, batteries and chargers, travels in two heavy-duty cases.
4. Does it record the whole sphere, or what the operator points at?
An aimed camera records what someone chose to look at while standing in the root, driving a robot and watching a screen. Anything not pointed at is gone. A full-sphere recording captures every surface at every position and moves the looking to a desk. Ask which it is. Detectra records 8K 360° video at 24 fps, stitched on board. 8K 360° video for internal blade inspection explains what the numbers mean in millimetres.
5. How is the lighting controlled?
Inside a blade every surface is glossy resin and the robot is the only light. A crack in an adhesive fillet is invisible lit from the front and obvious lit from the side. Ask whether the lights can be switched individually, or only all together. Detectra has four LED panels of 52 LEDs, each switched on its own.
6. Does every frame know where it is?
A finding without a position is a photograph. Ask whether the recording carries the distance from the root, how it is measured, and whether it is on every take or added afterwards by hand. Detectra logs the distance travelled with every take as a telemetry overlay, together with site, turbine, blade, chamber, operator and time.
7. How long per blade, and how many blades per day?
Turbine downtime is what the inspection costs. Ask for capture time per blade with the turbine stopped, and for the number of blades per day on one set of batteries. Detectra captures a blade in about 15 minutes and does up to 12 blade inspections per day.
8. Does it need a network?
There is no network inside a blade and often none at the turbine. Ask how the tablet talks to the robot, at what range, and where the recordings are stored during the inspection. Detectra's tablet joins the crawler's own Wi-Fi link, 80 m rated and 100 m verified line of sight, and the recordings go to 250 GB of storage on board.
9. Which turbines is it compatible with?
Ask for the list of manufacturers and blade types it has been inside, and what happens at an unusual root hatch. Detectra is compatible with all major turbine manufacturers and enters through the root hatch as a technician would.
10. Who operates it, and what training is included?
Some robots come with a service crew only; some can be bought and operated by the owner's own technicians. Ask which, how long training takes, and what languages the interface supports. Detectra's tablet interface runs in English, French, German and Spanish, and the crawler can be operated by a customer's own team after training.
11. Where does the data live, and who owns it?
The most overlooked question. Ask where the recordings and findings are stored, in whose account, in which country, and what happens to them if the contract ends. A good answer is that the owner holds the data in a system the owner controls. Fenestra stores recordings, findings and reports in the customer's own SharePoint, hosted in the EU, behind multi-factor authentication. Who owns your blade inspection data is a question worth asking every supplier, not only the robotic ones.
12. How is the recording reviewed, and how long does that take?
A full-sphere recording of a whole blade is a lot of footage. Ask what the review workflow is, whether findings are flagged on the frame with their position, whether AI helps, and whether a human decides what enters the report. In Fenestra, review is about 3 hours per turbine today; AI proposes candidates and an inspector confirms, rejects or reclassifies each one before it enters a report.
13. What comes out at the end?
Ask to see a report. It should contain findings with positions, the frames they were seen on, a severity, and a way to get back to the recording. Fenestra generates a branded inspection report in Word or PDF with a 360° walkthrough appendix, and CSV summaries, from the findings themselves.
14. What is the support, warranty and upgrade path?
Ask about certification, warranty, software updates and remote support, and about what the platform can carry later. Detectra is CE-marked with a 12-month warranty, software updates and remote support over a built-in VPN. The Detectra research crawler carries a research payload with its own computer, and Quantra, with 2027 targeted availability, adds NDT measurement.
The short version
If there is time for three questions, ask about reach, lighting and position. A robot that reaches the outer half of the blade, lights a fillet from the side, and stamps every frame with its distance from the root will find the failures that matter and make them findable again next year. A robot with a better camera and none of those three will produce beautiful footage of the root zone.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important specification of an internal blade inspection robot?
Reach, as a percentage of blade length from the root, measured on real blade types. It decides whether the robot can see the trailing-edge bond and the shear webs in the middle of the blade, where the failures that end blades start.
Should a blade inspection robot record 360° video or photographs?
A full-sphere recording, because nothing has to be aimed at inside the blade and the review can happen afterwards from any angle. Photographs record only what the operator chose to point at.
Who should own the inspection data from a blade robot?
The asset owner. Ask every supplier where recordings and findings are stored, in whose account and in which country, and what happens when the contract ends.