Using a drone, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, Boeing’s new method of inspecting airplanes for damage and structural issues is allowing the aerospace giant to cut inspection of large military aircraft down from a days long process to just a few hours.
The drone flies across the aircraft’s surfaces, gathering huge amounts of data. The data is analyzed for possible problems. And since the data is retained for each tail number, Boeing and the Air Force can compare the data between inspections to do a version of change detection, Torbjorn Sjogren, vice president of government services for Boeing Defense, said at a briefing last week.
“You can do a complete comparison that provides you a degree of insight we haven’t had before,” Sjogren said. Over repeated inspections of the same aircraft — and allowing for fleet-wide comparisons — “you’ll amortize it throughout the entire fleet; the ability to drill down aircraft by aircraft is significant.”
Boeing, working with Near Earth Autonomy, has assessed a C-17 and the giant C-5. Sjogren noted that crew would normally have to work six stories up to safely inspect a Lockheed Martin-built C-5, an inspection that traditionally takes at least a few hours. Instead, he claimed, a C-5 inspection in late January took just 10 minutes.
The drone’s sensor is more accurate than the human eye and, since data can be compared over time, the ability to spot new problems or demonstrate that a fix is working should be much improved. The drone generates 60,000 data points per second during an inspection, according to the Boeing executive.
Photo: A U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy arrives at RAF Mildenhall, England, Apr 22, 1999. The C-5B is delivering 4 fuel trucks to help the fuels management flight of the 100th Supply Squadron keep up with the increasing demand to fuel more KC-135R Stratotankers for Operation Allied Force. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt Brad Fallin)
Source: Breaking Defense