Remote Enhanced Visual Inspection of Aircraft by a Mobile Robot

Abstract

Aircraft skin inspection methodology, and the technical and economic advantages that can be expected from doing it with the aid of robotics, automation, and computer vision technologies, are reviewed. Robots for deployment of inspection systems are described briefly. Computer vision methods and algorithms for detection of cracks, surface corrosion, and subsurface corrosion are then discussed in detail. Cracks and surface corrosion are both detected by algorithms that pipeline preprocessing/enhancement, multiresolution/wavelet based feature extraction, and neural net based feature vector classification; subsurface corrosion is detected by a structured laser light surface profiling technique for the pillowing that subsurface corrosion causes. Functionality is illustrated by application to current data. I.