Automated Inspection Of Aircraft

AUTOMATED INSPECTION OF AIRCRAFT

INTRODUCTION  establish technical feasibility of using robotic systems in aircraft maintenance facilities  develop robotic tools to assist aircraft inspectors Benefits Improved Detection  Improved Repeatability Reduced Aircraft Downtime Electronically Retrievable Inspection Data  Improved Safety for Inspectors

2. PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS FINAL-PHASE DEVELOPMENT • MECHANICAL SYSTEM •

CONTROL

•

SENSORS

SYSTEM

• HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE

3. MECHANICAL SYSTEM DETAILS • MECHANICAL DESIGN OF FIRST-PHASE ROBOT

• SECOND-PHASE MECHANICAL IMPROVEMENTS • SYSTEM PERFORMANCE • LONG-TERM MECHANICAL DESIGN ISSUES

ROBOT MOTIONS

 WALKING MOTION  ALIGNMENT MOTION.

Spine assembly raised Spine assembly motion Spine assembly lowered Stabilizer bridge moved

5 CONTROL SYSTEM DETAILS • • • •

ON-BOARD ROBOT ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS GROUND-BASED ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS OPERATOR WORKSTATION COMPUTER SATELLITE EQUIPMENT ENCLOSURE

• control points (On=White, Off=Gray) • limit switches (On=Yellow, Off=Gray) •suction cups (Vacuum=Green, Ambient pressure=Red)

. CONTROL SYSTEM SOFTWARE

• NAVIGATION AND VISUALIZATION

6. SENSOR SYSTEM DETAILS. • EDDY-CURRENT SENSORS  EDDY-CURRENT INSPECTION HARDWARE  EDDY-CURRENT SENSOR CALIBRATION  EDDY-CURRENT SOFTWARE

 EDDY-CURRENT FLAW DETECTION •

VISUAL SENSORS AND VIDEO-BASED RIVET LOCATION ALGORITHMS.  ROBOTICS INSTITUTE VIDEO RIVET LOCATION ALGORITHMS

CMRI VIDEO RIVET LOCATION ALGORITHMS NEURAL NETWORK RESULTS THIRD TRIAL: IMPROVED CAMERA SYSTEM RIVET LINE-FITTING ALGORITHM

•FEEDBACK SWITCHES

CONCLUSION The robot was able to achieve the following goals: adhering to and walking over an aircraft fuselage regardless of the orientations of those surfaces, acquiring eddy-current inspection data that appeared identical to manually deployed eddy-current sensors, and being remotely operated using video and sensor feedback provided to the inspector. Video camerabased automatic alignment and navigation were demonstrated in an auxiliary experiment using a separate robot moving on an aircraft skin surface.