To support Belgium’s growing investment in the aerospace industry, SABCA was founded in 1920 in a suburban area of Brussels. They began with in-house designs for both civilian and military aircraft. SABCA was also granted a license to produce other manufacturer’s aircraft. Over the last century, SABCA has continued to become a leader in Belgium’s aerospace innovations and has been a significant partner in the European Airbus conglomerate. As aerospace technology has progressed, so have SABCA’s manufacturing projects. SABCA’s latest ventures have brought them into the world of drone manufacturing.

SABCA has several drone operations that have been paving the way for Belgium to become leaders in drone capabilities. They have created a fully autonomous system that has been completely vetted for use in parcel delivery, aerial mapping, inspection, and surveillance. SABCA’s drones have safely demonstrated that they can be flown over densely populated communities, around critical infrastructure, and through adverse weather conditions. In late February of 2019, SABCA announced that they were entering a groundbreaking drone trial with offshore energy provider DEME.

With its headquarters in the Zwijndrecht municipality of Antwerp, Belgium, DEME was officially established in 1991. However, their roots go back over 140 years as DEME’s founders were key players in Belgium’s oceanic engineering industry. Belgium has long depended on dredging and engineering the waterways around them to protect the land from flooding, access the country’s natural resources, and open trade routes. DEME was formed from the consolidation of four of these companies. To become a more environmentally sound company, DEME has adopted several of the Sustainable Development Goals put forth by the United Nations to create a more sustainable world by 2030.

Much of DEME’s offshore operations embrace these sustainability measures. Because they require no fuel to operate, wind farms provide an environmentally friendly way of harnessing energy. DEME operates a large offshore wind farm along with a wide range of offshore vessels and stations. To further enhance their sustainability efforts, DEME contracted SABCA to begin using drones to inspect their offshore holdings. Typically the operations and management of DEME’s offshore energy projects involve sending a manned crew out to the site. This is a time consuming, costly, and often dangerous way to inspect offshore sites.

Drones for such inspections keep employees safe while cutting costs and time wasted. “We work closely with our renewable energy customers to offer reliable and cost efficient maintenance and repair solutions for their offshore assets. By adding drone services to our solutions we can provide detailed and highly accurate inspection data, while further increasing safety and reducing downtime and costs,” says Luc Vandenbulcke, CEO of DEME. “More accurate data results in shorter response times, better availability, and a higher electricity output. Also, as offshore wind turbines are getting bigger, the industry needs maintenance partners that can follow this trend.”

The pilot program was held at DEME’s Rentel offshore wind farm in the Belgium North Sea. “The pilot study represents the first commercial, cross-border, ‘beyond visual line of sight’ (BVLOS) drone operations to take place at offshore wind farms in the North Sea,” states a DEME press release. The goal of the trial was to see how the drones could autonomously be used for environmental surveillance, search and rescue, and the inspection of substations and turbines. SABCA deployed a traditional multirotor drone in tandem with a fixed wing drone. With a wingspan greater than 10ft, the fixed wing drone is also a long-endurance drone capable of flying the more than 22 miles from the coast of Belgium to the offshore wind farm. Meanwhile, the multirotor drone was stationed at the offshore site to autonomously inspect the wind farm. It was also tasked with carrying packages between offshore substations.

The trial showed that combining the drone hardware with artificial intelligence creates a complete inspection program. It is a program that saves time and money while protecting human lives and the environment. “We are convinced that these innovative, advanced technologies, which focus on fully autonomous operations without the need for any vessels and people offshore, have a game-changing potential to increase safety, lower the impact on the environment in the O&M phase of a project and reduce the overall costs,” said Bart De Poorter, General Manager DEME Offshore. “Ultimately, we expect unmanned vehicles to contribute significantly to a lower Levelised Cost of Energy.”