Founded in 2022 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, RTDT Laboratories addresses the problem of recurring structural failures of wind turbines through its no-code SaaS platform for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of wind turbines. It provides owners, operators, service providers, and OEMs with deep insights into the structural performance of wind turbines to optimize their operation and maintenance.
The software is complemented by its proprietary hardware, Aerosense – a wireless, self-sufficient, long-range Bluetooth sensor module for direct data capture on wind turbine blades. It simultaneously measures vibrations, aerodynamic pressure, acoustics and temperature. Launched at the end of 2023, Aerosense combines data acquisition with powerful digital twinning models, to derive insights into aero-structural blade properties. “This level of insights and this type of blade characterization is currently not available to anyone in the market, which is why Aerosense has quickly attracted quite a bit of attention”, says Aris.
Originally designed for wind turbine blades, application areas for Aerosense technology are broad, encompassing fields such as Aerospace, defense (e.g. fighter jets, UAVs), civil infrastructure and maritime sectors and mobility. Co-founder Prof. Dr. Eleni Chatzi, the chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH Zurich, has substantial experience, particularly in vibration measurements in mobility projects.
Commercial deal in India
During his trip to Lucknow in northern India in February this year, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Aris Mukherjee, garnered the attention of several government officials and representatives from Uttar Pradesh Expressways Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) who are involved in 594km long highway called Ganga Expressway. Impressed by the startup’s technology, the Uttar Pradesh government entered a commercial agreement with RTDT to deploy the Aerosense system – along with several other measurement units – on a test vehicle and to perform a joint pilot to assess the road quality and riding comfort on the newly constructed Ganga Expressway.
This partnership marks the start of a potential larger-scale deployment of Aerosense across infrastructure projects in the state. “This is a big opportunity for us. India is a very large market with a rapidly growing infrastructure, and we see large potential for deployment of our technology across several application areas in the future. The collaboration with the Government of Uttar Pradesh and UPEIDA in particular has been excellent, and we are happy to see that they are willing to trial cutting-edge technologies from abroad with a very forward-looking mindset. We are very focused on delivering excellent results in this project to prove the value of our technology and to hopefully roll it out across all express-ways in the state. But our work in Uttar Pradesh is just the beginning, as we hope to expand to many other Indian states, especially in the wind energy sector which remains our primary focus”, comments Aris.
Further partnerships and growth
Outside of India, RTDT is deploying Aerosense in several projects with large customers in several countries, mainly in the wind energy industry. The latest deployment of Aerosense was with Siemens Gamesa on their 10MW offshore turbine in the North of Denmark, to perform an aerodynamic and structural characterization of the rotor blade with its sensors and software models.
While RTDT has been self-funded, the company anticipates growth in demand, which will require significant investments - discussions with potential investors are currently ongoing for a planned financing round. Besides, the company plans to expand its current five-man team.
(RAN)