Background
This project was funded through an ARM Institute Project Call that sought to respond to pervasive areas of need in U.S. manufacturing and, specifically, address key Department of Defense (DoD) manufacturing-focused Modernization Priorities. This and the other selected projects address issues found by the DoD and commercial community to be the most urgent and important that the ARM Institute’s ecosystem of 330+ member organizations can help solve.
Objective & Technical Approach
This project will develop a robotic vision and visual tactile inspection system that automates high-resolution surface defect inspections of spacecraft components and commercial airplane fuselages. Aircraft maintenance processes which incorporate these robotic technological improvements, particularly technology that improves quality of the inspection as well as replaces manual operations, offer the opportunity to significantly improve the reliability, maintainability, and readiness of aviation assets and ultimately to reduce the lifecycle costs of the fleet.
The use of artificial intelligence and robotics will allow the system to standardize and learn inspection processes for many components in different industries, which would also benefit a broad subset of ARM Institute members.