Page 26 - AAA NOV / DEC 2024 Digital Magazine | GBP
P. 26
They Crawl Through the Cobra, which sounds like some-
Insides of an Engine thing from a superhero movie,
but is actually a long, thin,
Another engine maker Rolls- remote-controlled robot with
Royce has teamed up with augmented reality and repair
academics of Harvard University capabilities,” a Rolls-Royce offi-
and Nottingham University to cial said.
demonstrate potential future tech-
nology of collaborative ‘swarm’ “As the robot moves through the
robots that crawl through the engine it gives our engineers,
insides of an engine. who are equipped with a virtual
reality headset, a snake’s eye
Removing an engine from a view of what it is seeing through
plane to repair it is expensive and a VR platform. The engineer
time-consuming so manufactur- is completely immersed in to the component with suc-
ers such as Rolls-Royce prefer to what the snake is seeing,” he tion cups. Specially developed
conduct ‘on-wing’ inspection and explained. software allows the robot to
repairs where possible. process 1,000 x 1,000- millimeter
Leading MRO company Lufthansa surfaces. Even thick composite
Each robot measures around Technik AG has not only devel- structures such as wing connec-
10mm in diameter which would oped a stationary robot for the tion areas pose no problem. For
be deposited in the centre of intricate inspection and lasting the repair, the robot scans the
an engine via a ‘snake’ robot repair, but also have put a mobile damage, identifies the surface
and would then perform a visual solution successfully into oper- and calculates both the shape
inspection of hard-to-reach areas ation. With the help of the new of the scarf joint and the mill-
by crawling through the engine. robot, mobile service teams can ing path before cutting out the
These robots would carry small detect and repair large, damaged damaged material. Afterwards,
cameras that provide a live video areas on the wings and the fuse- the repair layers are cut to size
feed back to the operator allowing lage of an aircraft – on site and and inserted into the 3D scarfed
them to complete a rapid visual even upside down. surface created by the robot.
inspection of the engine with- The newly inserted part is then
out having to remove it from the “The mobile robot can easily manually bonded to the fuse-
aircraft. recognize free-form 3D surfaces. lage and cured. The procedure
To make a scarf joint, it is placed enhances the bonding strength
“We call our snake robots on a positioning device attached and offers reproducible repairs,”
said Henrik Schmutzler Innovation
Engineer for composite repairs.
The global artificial intelligence in
robotics market size is anticipated
to reach USD 124.77 billion by
2030 and is anticipated to expand
at a CAGR of 38.5 per cent from
2024 to 2030, according to a new
report by Grand View Research,
Inc.
The advantage of these technol-
ogies is that inspection can be
performed remotely wherever
robots such as Sensiworm and
Cobra are available. So, there
is no need to physically send an
engineer to the site.
26 | NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2024 WWW.GBP.COM.SG/AAA
