News & Views, Volume 43 | LATITUDE™ Innovating the NDE Data Acquisition Process

By: Jason Van Velsor

From the creation of the first simple stone tools to the invention of the world wide web, technological innovation has been the undercurrent that has carried the human species from our primitive survivalist ways to our present-day complexity of modern conveniences. We innovate from necessity, competition, or from a desire for an improved quality of life. Innovation has been and remains key to our survival and proliferation.

In business, it is no different and innovation has been a mainstay at Structural Integrity and part of our core values since our inception in 1983. We are constantly developing and applying innovative practices and technologies to meet our clients’ toughest challenges and to provide best-in-value solutions. In this spirit, we are excited to announce one of our most recent innovations, LATITUDE^TM.

LATITUDE is a non-mechanized position and orientation encoding technology designed for use with nondestructive evaluation (NDE) equipment. Simply stated, LATITUDE enables an operator to manipulate a probe by hand while maintaining a digital record of the position and orientation of the probe at all times. For many applications, LATITUDE can be thought of as a fast and compact alternative to cumbersome and complicated automated inspection equipment.