At NDE Solutions, as Australia’s fastest-growing asset inspection company, our team is helping key industries maintain the integrity of their high-value infrastructure—and, thanks to a savvy partnership with the University of South Australia and Australian Research Council, we’re embarking on a world-first research project to improve non-destructive evaluation and asset inspection services worldwide.

An augmented reality system for asset integrity and inspection excellence.

This exciting and innovative project is valued at over $1,500,000 and will run over three years and deliver an augmented reality system that integrates with both manual inspection and robotic inspection platforms, empowering inspectors from anywhere in the world with seamless remote connectivity and unparalleled control.

As robots and personnel scan and inspect an asset, an off-site industry expert will have the ability to remotely collaborate with any on-site technicians through seeing detailed virtual content overlaid onto physical assets and head-up displays.

The remote inspector will also have the ability to interface and assume direct control of the robotic inspection tools and instrumentation—they will even be able to plug into a field technician’s helmet camera and make changes to their head-up display in real time, improving inspection efficiency and contributing to the prevention of critical asset failure through early identification.

This would be of great value to industries and a meaningful step forward in the modern industrial revolution.

Not only will industries be able to connect and interact with remote assets, but this will give them the ability to provide training and support to field technicians on the fly, no matter where they are globally.

This has the potential to open up a whole new way people in the engineering field can communicate, interact, learn, be ready for field deployment significantly sooner, and reduce total numbers of required field personnel. More people will be able to stay out of the field and instead remain in safer, city-based working environments with powerful remote inspection and control mechanisms available at their fingertips.

Of course, the ultimate aim is for us to develop more efficient and effective ways to monitor and maintain asset integrity.

After all, industries should be able to avoid asset failure which can result in tragic loss of life, substantial financial cost and detrimental environmental impact.

At NDE Solutions, we continue to invest in the research and development of innovative technology projects such as this in order to promote non-destructive evaluation and remote testing solutions that can be executed without the need to resort to shutting down facilities and interrupting key processes.

Our highly-qualified team have performed thousands of inspections for some of Australia’s biggest industry names, and are excited by the opportunities that this project’s new augmented reality system represents for remote asset inspection services worldwide.

Key Project Outcomes (Summary):

• Absolute positioning encoding system.
• Removal of personnel from the field (reduced risk of operations).
• Significantly reduced mobilisation cost for small and medium-sized enterprise ADHOC inspections.
• Permanent video record of all inspections.