Permanently installed monitoring systems offer continuous inspection benefits, but their economic viability is limited by the number of sensors required to achieve sufficient coverage.

Understanding material microstructure is critical for ensuring the performance and safety of high-value engineering components, yet conventional techniques are often slow, destructive, or limited in scale.

Introducing new NDT technologies into industry is often hindered by the need for long-term support and multi-supplier availability, particularly in sectors such as aerospace.

Since 2006, the University of Strathclyde has led pioneering work in robotic Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE), developing and deploying mobile, aerial, and industrial robotic systems to transform how inspections are performed across complex environments and processes.

Nuclear and defence industries face mounting safety, regulatory, and cost pressures, particularly as infrastructure ages. Traditional defect assessment in critical components (e.g., submarines, nuclear plants) is expensive, overly conservative, and time-consuming—costing millions in inspection hours and downtime.

The University of Bristol’s Ultrasonics & NDT Group pioneered Full Matrix Capture (FMC) and Total Focusing Method (TFM)—revolutionising how ultrasonic arrays are used in safety-critical inspections.

Industrial sectors are demanding smarter, safer, and more cost-effective ways to inspect critical infrastructure—especially in high-temperature, high-risk, or hard-to-access environments.

Across critical industries—nuclear energy, transport infrastructure, steel manufacturing, and food safety—legacy inspection techniques are manual, expensive, and often unreliable.

Corrosion is a billion-dollar problem-costing the oil & gas sector alone $8 billion per year in the US. Traditional inspection methods can’t monitor equipment in real-time or during operation, forcing costly shutdowns and risking safety failures.