Bullfrog brings low-cost thermographic inspection into the composite manufacturing line, catching defects during production to reduce the bottleneck of final inspection; moreover, parts assessed before they have incurred their full manufacturing cost.
The Bullfrog Technologies solution (Sense) is an in-process inspection system for composite manufacturing that combines low-cost active thermography hardware with AI-driven software to detect and categorise defects like delamination, foreign object debris, and ply misalignment during production. There are 3 components to the solution: Iris, the thermography hardware that captures scan data; Lilypad, the AI-driven software that processes it on-site; and Chorus, the cloud platform that aggregates and analyses data across inspections.
The innovation is twofold. First, where current inspection methods like ultrasound and CT scanning are expensive, sit as the last quality gate, and require NDT-level specialists to operate, Bullfrog’s solution sits in-process using algorithms to detect and flag defects during production and reduces the skill demand, ultimately reducing the final stage bottleneck. This isn’t to replace end-of-production sign-off by NDT specialists, but to increase confidence in production quality throughout the process.
Second, our cloud platform (Chorus) utilises captured data to inform our AI algorithm, allowing us to categorise the defects located during scans and produce detailed retrospective analysis. For the customer, this means visibility into where and why defects are occurring across their production and turning inspection data into actionable insight for process improvement or production decisions.