Drone and robotic technologies have seen significant advancements in recent years, leading to a growing number of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) applications seeking to leverage these developments. As a result, robotic inspection is gaining increased adoption across various industries.
The deployment of robotic systems offers numerous advantages for NDE, including improved repeatability, the removal of inspectors from hazardous or confined environments, and faster data collection. However, to integrate these technologies into standard practice, it is essential to clearly understand the capabilities and limitations of specific systems and their effectiveness in performing inspections.
Organisations such as SPRINT Robotics regularly host technology trials, allowing vendors of robotic inspection and maintenance solutions to demonstrate their systems in environments representative of real industrial conditions.
Despite this, it remains uncommon for the results from robotic systems deploying NDE methods to undergo the same level of evaluation and quality assessment as those obtained through conventional NDE inspection methods.
Following on from the selection of robotic inspection of Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) as the target application, a bespoke test rig was designed and assembled in collaboration with Equinor at their facility in Mongstad in Norway.
This rig consists of almost 100 m of ex-service pipes with a combination of in-service degradation and simulated corrosion, which have been assembled and insulated to be as representative as possible of real pipe racks present on site.
Following the completion of the rig, trials took place in May and October 2026, with four robotic inspection systems appropriate for the inspection of CUI to attendance.
Each of these systems inspected pre-selected regions of the rig under the supervision of HOIS and a panel of industry experts to independently assess the capabilities and performance of each technology.