Accelerating industrial inspections with AI-powered corrosion detection
Industrial infrastructure in manufacturing and industrial plants faces a constant hidden threat in the form of rust and corrosion. These silent yet costly adversaries often compromise safety, efficiency and asset lifespan. A leading Japanese robotics company recognized the pressing need for a smarter, more scalable approach to monitoring these hidden vulnerabilities across complex plant environments such as gas plants, pipelines and coastal industrial zones.
HCLTech, along with the client, co-engineered an AI-powered drone-based monitoring solution capable of observing and identifying these vulnerabilities. Leveraging our strengths in AI engineering, we created a custom solution that identified early signs of rust and corrosion across vast industrial surfaces quickly, safely and with minimal human input.
This case study explores how we collaborated with our client to create a comprehensive drone inspection solution that empowers maintenance teams to make informed decisions quickly, reducing downtime, preventing costly failures and ensuring operational efficiency powered by AI Engineering. From improving detection rates to optimizing maintenance schedules, the solution is already driving measurable impact.
The challenges
Our client is a prominent Japan-based robotics company that specializes in drone-as-a-service (DaaS) solutions for industrial applications. They wanted to enhance the safety and operational reliability of large-scale industrial and manufacturing plants. One of the key challenges their end customers faced was the timely and accurate detection of rust and corrosion, factors that can silently degrade infrastructure and impact productivity.
The existing inspection processes are heavily manual, requiring frequent on-site evaluations that were risky, labor-intensive and costly. Modern-day industrial environments are large and complex and manual inspections are slow and error-prone.
To address this, the client sought an AI-enabled solution that could leverage drones to automate corrosion monitoring and plant-wide inspection with minimal human intervention. The solution also needed to be able to monitor hazardous zones such as chemical plants or underwater pipelines. However, building a cost-effective, computer vision–powered system that could detect early signs of rust, dust accumulation, etc., with high accuracy across diverse surfaces and environmental conditions posed a considerable technical challenge.
They turned to HCLTech to co-engineer a solution that blends drone automation with AI-driven inspection capabilities, paving the way for smarter, safer and more proactive infrastructure maintenance.
Our solutions
After jointly defining the technical roadmap, HCLTech’s AI Engineering team integrated NVIDIA Jetson boards into Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and built custom software to enable intelligent, edge-based inspection. This end-to-end solution blends computer vision (CV), edge AI and drone automation to revolutionize how industrial corrosion is monitored and managed.
Key highlights
- Developed a rust detection solution using UAVs to capture high-resolution videos of equipment, machinery and pipes, utilizing vision analytics for real-time rust detection
- Transformed images from RGB to HSV color space for better feature extraction and visualization, applying semantic models for precise region extraction
- Deployed models on edge devices, achieving 16 FPS for rust detection based on color and texture features and generated heat maps to assess rust severity
- Automated annotation of corroded areas, enabling accurate rust detection despite irregular shapes and supported maintenance activity planning
Impact
AI-powered drone inspections enable 90% accuracy in rust detection and 100% marking accuracy thus enabling faster and data-driven decisions. This significantly reduces manual inspection costs by 80%, improves worker safety in hazardous zones and streamlines maintenance with real-time insights, freeing up resources for critical tasks.
Smarter and safer corrosion detection
- 90% accuracy in rust and corrosion detection using AI-powered drone inspections
- 100% marking accuracy for rapid and precise defect identification and severity classification
- Enabled quick, informed decisions, reducing downtime and avoiding costly failures
- Timely identification of corrosion to prevent outages or catastrophic disasters
- Improved worker safety by minimizing the need for manual inspections in hazardous zones
Cost-effective monitoring and industrial inspection
- 80% reduction in manual inspection costs through automation and reduced site visits
- Streamlined inspections with real-time footage and actionable insights
- Increased safety and compliance with regulations in industrial plants
- Freed up resources for critical tasks, boosting overall maintenance productivity
As a trusted engineering partner, we supported our client in developing a transformative tool for modern inspection and monitoring tasks.
