News & Publications

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27 June 2023

We are excited to be selected as one of the nine companies across Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk to join the Launch Academy, a technology accelerator programme organized by the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, to develop innovative technologies in the offshore wind supply chain. 

The launch meeting was held today 27 June 2023 in Norwich, during which Dr Jianxin Gao introduced our ambition to develop a novel robotic maintenance system for the wind sector, both onshore and offshore. Exciting times are ahead as we will receive tailored business support within the programme to help speed up the progress to turn our dream into a reality in the coming years. Further detail is here:  Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult announces first Launch Academy in East Anglia - ORE  

17 October 2022

Today the European Commission officially launched the 42 new Horizon Europe projects including our Romain project under the AI, Data and Robotics theme. Together with other five partners, we will be working in the following three years to develop a robotic maintenance system for wind turbine blades in-situ. 

17 August 2022

After going through the extensive process of the Horizon Europe guarantee funding application, we finally get the grant offer letter from Innovate UK today, which enables us to prepare the project kick-off meeting in September 2022 in Portugal.  More details will follow.

30 May 2022

We are in the process of applying for the UK government's Horizon Europe guarantee funding for our first Horizon Europe project which is scheduled to start in September 2022.  

18 March 2022

We are thrilled to be informed that our first Horizon Europe proposal has been successful.  The grant agreement is under preparation now. More details will follow. 

20 January 2022

Wind turbines are expected to run around 20-25 years, during which O&M (operation and maintenance) becomes crucial in maximising the economic and environmental benefits of wind assets. Current maintenance is performed by humans via rope access dangling in the sky along wind turbine blades (WTBs) which is both dangerous and low efficiency, especially for offshore wind. The ultimate solution is a robotic system to avoid the need of humans working in the sky along the WTBs. One of the critical problems is the deployment of the robotic system onto WTBs which should be efficient, reliable, and fail-safe. 

At Front we have come up with a new robotic deployment concept which is fundamentally different from existing solutions. With this concept, WTB maintenance equipment is expected to be deployed to WTBs efficiently and reliably. A patent has been filed recently, while proof-of-concept work is under planning. 

18 June 2021  

The full programme of Horizon Europe has been announced by the European Commission in June. We are building up collaborative consortia to bid in relevant calls to develop robotic inspection and maintenance techniques for the wind energy sector.

12 May 2021

The first field trial was carried out on May 6, 2021 in Blyth.  It paved way for further field tests to demonstrate the technique.  More information can be found at the project website www.shearwin.info. Keep an eye out here for more news and announcements in the coming weeks. 

05 November 2020

As part of our collaborative R&D programme Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency has awarded a consortium led by Adamas Wind Limited a co-funded project to develop a shearography system for on-site inspection of wind turbine blades.

Adamas Wind Limited was founded by Chris Palmer and David Still CBE. The duo has over 50 years of combined experience in the wind turbine market from wind farm development, installation and operations. The company provides Operations, Maintenance and Asset Management services to the European wind market and uses innovation and technical expertise as a driver to enhance the performance of wind turbines. 

Front Technologies Ltd was founded by Dr Jianxin Gao in June 2020. As a tech start-up, the Company is dedicated to research and development of engineering techniques related to inspection, testing and measurement of structural integrity of engineering components and structures, as well as biomedical engineering, medical devices etc. 

Innerspec UK (ITUK) is a branch of Innerspec Inc headquartered in Forest, Virginia (USA 1980). Innerspec Inc has offices in Europe, China and Mexico along with representatives around the globe that provide commercial and technical support with factory trained personnel. Innerspec UK is building a team of researchers, development engineers, customer support specialists and technicians dedicated to design and support our products and services. 

Success in securing funding of our ShearWin project through one of 1,103 grants from Innovate UK will enable our group to develop an innovative non-destructive testing tool that can be used by inspectors working in-situ to inspect wind turbine blades. Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, are investing up to £191 million to fund single and collaborative research and development projects as part of the Sustainable Innovation Fund over the next two years.

The ShearWin project combines the engineering expertise of Front Technologies and Innerspec with the composite knowledge and wind industry experience of Adamas Wind. The development of the system could bring to market a rapidly deployable, highly capable NDT tool that could help detect structurally critical defects that may otherwise remain hidden using traditional non-destructive methods.

The ShearWin system could be used to generate in depth reports concerning the health of rotor blades and help capture critical manufacturing defects before they develop, propagate and become potentially catastrophic.  

Innovate UK Executive Chair Dr Ian Campbell said: 

“In these difficult times we have seen the best of British business innovation. The pandemic is not just a health emergency but one that impacts society and the economy. ShearWin, along with every initiative Innovate UK has supported through this fund, is an important step forward in driving sustainable economic development. Each one is also helping to realise the ambitions of hard-working people.”

Adamas Wind Chair David Still CBE said:

“The award of this project during an unprecedented pandemic is testament to the resilience of start-up businesses and our team who remain at the forefront of pushing innovation. ShearWin is a critical project to solving a long standing issue of being able to accurately inspect defects that are simply not visible to other types of inspection techniques. The support we have been given from Innovate UK will help us bring this game changing technology to market. We are looking forward to continuing progress with our partners and are excited by what our collaborative future holds”

17 October 2020

Our first proposal prepared in July 2020 has won Innovate UK funding, which aims to develop an advanced shearography inspection tool for wind energy service providers to use to inspect wind turbine blades in-situ. Together with other two collaborative partners, we have launched the ShearWin project on 1st October 2020, and a prototype ShearWin system will be developed by June 2021.  Now we are looking to recruit two experienced engineers to join the technical team to deliver the project and win more funding.  Please go to the Vacancies page for details.

28 August 2020

Details will follow after the lifting of embargo imposed by the funding body. 

10 July 2020

The Company was officially registered with Companies House on 29 June 2020 in England & Wales, Reg No. 12702965.