Submitted Abstract
The project will deliver a first prototype of a fully automated system based on mobile robots for industrial air frame inspection. The system will comprise a mobile ground robot as well as a mobile flying robot (unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), drone) which are both able to automatically move / fly and navigate around an aircraft without human remote control. The robots will carry a suitable sensor suite for industrial air frame inspection also comprising a high-resolution camera. The system prototype will be able to work already in an industrial environment for aircraft air frame inspection in cooperation with LuxAir and Cargolux. The ground robot and the UAV will be able to carry at least 6kg, which allows the use of a camera with up to 80 megapixels and additional sensors such as a laser scanner. In order to fulfil the challenging requirements of a least 6kg payload, a more powerful UAV will be used. The mobile ground robot will be used for underneath inspection. The system prototype includes a fully automated 3D model generation of the inspected object that allows a one-to-one 3D image replication of the original object. Suspicious spots can be 100% identified and marked. The images will be processed as video for real-time remote access to the inspection results and will be stored for comparison in the next maintenance interval.The project is based on a SnT research project, in which the control software for automated flight control and navigation, the sensor data processing, the 3D modelling and the image stitching was developed.