SCANNING LARGE AEROSPACE STRUCTURES USING OPEN- ARCHITECTURE CRAWLERS

The determination of the integrity of complex large metallic and composite structures requires costeffective rapid inspection capability. Removing components from a structure for NDE at an inspection facility is not economical. Detection and characterization of defects are labor intensive, time consuming and when the process is manual the results are vulnerable to human error. These limitations of NDE created a need for portable, user friendly inspection systems that can rapidly scan large areas of complex structures and locate all the detrimental conditions. Addressing this need has been an evolutionary process that followed the technology trend, and unique devices were developed to allow rapid field inspection. This development involves multidisciplinary approaches to integrate NDE, robotics, neural networks, materials science, imbedded computing and automated control. These efforts have led to various portable inspection systems and the current trend is towards fully automatic systems that will operate autonomously. To support the need for effective portable robotic system the authors developed the multifunction automated crawling system (MACS) offering an o pen architecture robotic platform for NDE boards and sensors. This crawler enabled the technology of "walking" computer platforms with standard plug-in NDE boards. This capability offers a larger pool of companies and individuals to become potential producers of NDE instruments. Thus, a significant cost reduction can be materialized with a rapid transition of novel concepts to practical use. The capability and potential of MACS as an enabling technology will be discussed in this paper.