Inspection and Testing

Cutting edge automation with the highest CAGR, robotic inspections, and testing robots are all expected to grow at a 30.9 percent CAGR from 2021 to 2030 – with the market size in 2030 reaching $13.943 billion, up from $940 million in 2020!

This staggering growth rate is due to the need for inspections and testing at manufacturing phase-gate processes, including incoming materials, in-process materials, semi-finished products, and finished products in every industry. Moreover, automated inspection and testing systems collect, store, analyze, and provide historical and live data.

What drives the market forward?

The systems' ability to:

  • Effectively inspect and test beyond human vision
  • Detect bottlenecks and improve throughput, accumulation, capacity, and downtimes
  • Define and test anomalies through deep learning algorithms from training data
  • Operate at dangerous and complex worksites and ensure worker safety
  • Ensure compliance, agility, transparency, and productivity through the digital audit log

Industries where safety is paramount, such as the oil and gas, food and beverage, aerospace, automotive, electronic, pharmaceutical, transportation, power generation, nuclear or alternative energy, and other sectors all employ inspecting and testing robots. The decision to automate results in repeatability, speed, accuracy, autonomy, and coverage – but the benefits do not stop there.

Robot Inspection Image

How Do Automated Inspection and Testing Systems Benefit Industries?

As your automation partner, one of our strengths is to view the challenges in your industry, enterprise, and vision as opportunities to streamline your operations. We are motivated to design automation assets that significantly reduce downtime, provide solutions according to your budget, and analyze risk points to create a safe human work environment. Alongside these benefits, our solution-driven robots dramatically reduce environmental risks, eliminate human error with superior data collection, and facilitate accurate, data-driven maintenance schedules.

Modular automation systems allow dynamic configuration with multiple sensors, controllers, tracks, cameras, and manipulators. Moreover, aerial vehicles also inspect exterior locations and large interior spaces. These testing and inspection automation innovations enable increased inspection rates and accuracy, handle complex curves, cover large areas, prevent industrial catastrophes, and increase end-product safety during aircraft manufacturing, railway coupling inspection, or satellite maintenance in space.

How do Industries Benefit from Automation Testing and Inspection?

From small applications to larger ones on the manufacturing floor, automated testing and inspection range from electrical testing and seal verification to more complex processes, such as:

  • Detecting casting defects like porosity, inclusion, cracks, and shrinkage
  • Detecting cracks, dents, grinding burns, hard spots, and soft spots
  • Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI), Corrosion Under Fireproofing (CUF), corrosion mapping with Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing (PAUT), along with general corrosions
  • Estimating a corrosion’s location, inspecting a tube's u-shape, and examining a defect’s shape and depth in heat exchanger tubes
  • Composite testing in the aerospace industry where robots equipped with IR thermography sensors inspect aircraft made with composite materials.
  • Roof insulation inspection along with inspecting and testing other construction builds and risks
  • Foreign Object Search and Retrieval (FOSAR)
  • Implementing immediate reporting thresholds through real-time analytics that facilitate effective structural integrity management
  • Remotely operated devices to inspect underwater structures for offshore oil exploration, as well as drilling and drilling inspection equipment
  • Inspecting welding defects with robotic inspection units that climb against the welding seam with a seam-tracking algorithm
  • Detecting pipeline, ducting, and vessel integrity threats through Inline Inspection (ILI)
  • Inspecting magnetic flux leakage due to metal loss defects

In addition, the key to achieving uptime maintenance and delivering quality to the end-user is to effectively utilize the different types of robotic testing and inspection methods for each industry and use-case – the applications are virtually unlimited!

Non Destructive Testing

How Do You Achieve Safe and Reliable Inspection and Testing in Challenging Environments?

The answer is Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) – a popular industrial choice that integrates automation testing and inspection robots within the industrial value chain. Alternatively known as Non-Destructive Examination or Evaluation (NDE) or Non-Destructive Inspection (NDI), NDT results from increased testing in challenging environments where the cost of scrap through Destructive Testing becomes higher. The target test material, size, defect pattern, test task, and required cycle time coupled with the budget have all evolved, and so must the different NDT technologies.

  • Visual Inspection (VT)

    The basic inspection system collects visual data on the tested material status.

  • Dye Penetrant Testing (PT)

    Dye Penetrant NDT, also known as Liquid Penetrant Testing, employs liquid to coat material and identify imperfections accordingly.

  • Eddy Current Testing (ET)

    A type of electromagnetic testing that utilizes the strengths of electrical currents (eddy currents) in a magnetic field surrounding a material to determine defects.

  • Thermographic Tests (TT)

    Thermographic Tests employ pulse thermography or lock-in thermographic methods where the component is heated in short pulses via an energy source. The surface records with a thermographic camera. Any defects react differently to the applied heat and stand out from the thermographic image's surroundings.

  • Magnetic Particle Testing (MT)

    Magnetic Particle NDTs identify material imperfections through disruptions to the magnetic field flow.

  • Ultrasonic Testing (UT)

    Ultrasonic Testing transmit high-frequency sound waves into target material to identify changes in the material's properties. Its subtypes include Phased Array Ultrasound Testing (PAUT), Automated Ultrasound Testing (AUT), and Time-of-Flight Diffraction (TOFD).

  • Radiography NDT (RT)

    Radiography Tests can detect density alterations with gamma- or X-radiations on materials.

  • Acoustic Emission NDT (AE)

    The Acoustic Emission NDT utilizes acoustic emissions to identify defects and imperfections in a material.

  • Leak Testing (LT)

    Leak Testing studies leaks in vessels and structures to identify defects through differential pressure, differential pressure decays, helium mass spectrometry, mass flow, and vacuum decay.

Inspect and Test the Right Way!

Sort, pick, place, and grade with characterization systems and add human dexterity, adjust part positions, monitor torque in your assembly systems, or upgrade your measurement systems with micron-level accuracy from laser sensors, probes, and gauges.

Regardless of your automated testing and inspection need, our experts analyze your systems and implement the best for your success as automation partners!

Reach out to learn more about how B2E Automation's solutions can help transform your business.

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