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[We had an effort, actually, that with some of the engineers here]
[[Waseem Faidi: Manager - GRC Non-Destructive Evaluation Lab]]
[working with a robotics company, to build a robotic crawler]
[with a camera, that goes on the tower]
[and could look at the blade from a lot closer distance.]
[So instead of a telescope that looks at the blade from 100 meters,]
[now we could look at it from 10 meters--]
[see in a lot more detail with a lot more focus.]
[What we're thinking about now as the next step is]
[that we need to go inside the blades.]
[So what we're looking at is using NDE--]
[non-destructive evaluation method--]
[that we could take and put on the crawler,]
[instead of the camera, to see inside the blade,]
[and we have an effort that we started out a couple years ago,]
[We think that if we increase the frequency to increase the range,]
[and we're working on increasing its speed.]
[So we could put the microwave antenna on the crawler,]
[and it will scan up and down the tower looking at the turbine blade]
[and seeing not only the outside of the blade but also the inside.]
[So it could see the fiber composite structures]
[as well as the problems and seeing defects and wrinkles]
