Contact NDT
checked 1 Sep 2026
Wind
Task maturity · five steps · every value is an analyst assessment| Task | Maturity | Dominant approach | Vendors | Deployed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blade visual inspection | Mature | Drone-based | 3 | 1 |
| Tower and nacelle inspection | Scaling | Drone-based | ||
| Blade cleaning | Early commercial | Rope/cable-suspended robot | 1 | |
| Lightning-protection testing | Early commercial | Rope/cable-suspended robot | 1 | |
| Blade repair | Pilot | Rope/cable-suspended robot | 3 | |
| Contact NDT | Pilot | Blade crawler |
Contact NDT
PilotNon-destructive testing of blade laminates by ultrasonic or thermographic probes in contact with the surface.
Crawler and suspended robots have carried ultrasonic probes in trials, but contact NDT on an installed blade needs consistent coupling on a curved surface at height, which no vendor sells routinely. It is a pilot task whose demand is real because subsurface defects are what visual inspection misses.
What happens today
The incumbent process
Technician-held probes from rope access, or blade removal for inspection.
Contact NDT is rarely done on installed blades because of access cost.
How do robots attack it
Robotics approaches
Blade crawlerPilot
A robot that adheres to and walks along the blade surface, carrying inspection or repair tooling directly to the defect.
example vendorsBladeBUG
Who buys it
Target customers
Asset owners and operators
Owners of ageing fleets are the demand source.