Building upon the initial concepts for aerial robotic inspection introduced at ICUAS 2024, this paper presents the maturation and field validation of a fully integrated system for inspecting Corrosion Under Insulation (CUI) in petrochemical facilities. Developed within the EU-funded SIMAR project, the system features a fully actuated aerial platform with tilted rotors, specifically engineered for operation in complex, GNSS-denied environments. It is designed to flexibly integrate various inspection payloads and to perform safe take-off and landing maneuvers on intricate structures such as pipelines and robotic crawlers. The platform is further designed to maintain stable flight under wind gusts of up to 10 m/s and to remain operationally robust in the event of a single rotor failure.

The proposed work describes the complete autonomous workflow for the deployment and retrieval of a remote-operated inspection crawler equipped with industrial-grade sensors, including X-Ray (XR) and Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC), on active industrial pipelines. Key enabling technologies include a multi-sensor fusion algorithm for pipe detection and a vision-based strategy for precise crawler recovery.

The paper culminates with the results of a Technology Readiness Level 7 (TRL7) pilot demonstration carried out at an operational petrochemical facility operated by CHEVRON. During this validation, the SIMAR system demonstrated a 44-fold improvement in inspection efficiency compared to traditional manual methods, while completely eliminating human exposure to work at height.