Systems and Methods for Stand-Off Inspection of Aircraft Structures

摘要

A system for stand-off inspection comprising local positioning system hardware and a nondestructive evaluation instrument supported by a pan-tilt mechanism. The system further comprises a computer system that is programmed to perform the following operations: (a) directing the local positioning system hardware toward an area of a surface on a target object by control of the pan-tilt mechanism; (b) activating the local positioning system hardware to acquire an image; (c) processing the image to determine whether an anomaly is present in the area; (d) if an anomaly is present, determining coordinates of a position of the anomaly in a coordinate system of the target object; and (e) directing the nondestructive evaluation instrument toward a position corresponding to the coordinates. Optionally, the computer system is further programmed to measure one or more characteristics of the anomaly.

主权项

1. A system comprising local positioning system hardware, a nondestructive evaluation instrument, and a computer system programmed to execute the following operations:
(a) controlling said local positioning system hardware to determine a direction vector to a target object and acquire image data representing an image of an area on a surface of the target object which is intersected by the direction vector; (b) processing the image data to determine whether the image of the area includes information indicating presence of an anomaly in the area; (c) if it is determined in operation (b) that the image data includes information indicating the presence of an anomaly in the area, determining coordinates of a position of the anomaly relative to a coordinate system of the target object; (d) directing a nondestructive evaluation instrument toward an area on the target object having said coordinates; and (e) controlling said nondestructive evaluation instrument to acquire nondestructive evaluation measurement data representing a first characteristic of the anomaly using a stand-off nondestructive evaluation technique.