FreeFly
Name of applicant
Emad Samuel Malki Ebeid
Title
Professor
Institution
University of Southern Denmark
Amount
DKK 12,998,750
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
FreeFly aims to revolutionize drone technology for infrastructure inspection by designing bioinspired, bird-like flying robots capable of autonomous operation in high electromagnetic field environments. These robots reduce reliance on costly and hazardous human-led inspections of ageing powerlines by enabling safe, efficient, and continuous monitoring.
Why?
As powerline infrastructure ages, faults are becoming more frequent, posing risks to reliability and safety. Traditional inspection methods are costly, hazardous, and unsustainable. FreeFly addresses this challenge by developing scalable, cost-effective, and intelligent self-sustaining flying robots for autonomous infrastructure inspection.
How?
FreeFly explores how bioinspired flying robots can harvest energy from the electromagnetic fields around powerlines to power their flight, real-time sensing, and computing systems. This self-sustaining approach enables continuous, autonomous inspection without frequent battery replacements, supporting real-time defect detection in ageing overhead energy infrastructure.