SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATICALLY INSPECTING SURFACES

• US 20180170540A1
• Filed: 06/15/2016
• Published: 06/21/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/15/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Donecle
• Original Assignee: Donecle
• Inventors: CLAYBROUGH, Matthieu
• Granted Patent: US 10,377,485 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: B64C 39/024 of the remote controlled vehicle type, i.e. RPV
• CPC Class Codes: B64F 5/60 Testing or inspecting aircraft components or systems
• CPC Class Codes: B64U 10/10 Rotorcrafts
• CPC Class Codes: B64U 2101/00 UAVs specially adapted for particular uses or applications
• CPC Class Codes: B64U 2101/30 for imaging, photography or videography
• CPC Class Codes: B64U 2201/102 adapted for flying in formations
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/0094 involving pointing a payload, e.g. camera, weapon, sensor, towards a fixed or moving target
• CPC Class Codes: G05D 1/104 involving a plurality of aircrafts, e.g. formation flying traffic control systems for aircraft G08G5/00

Abstract

The invention relates to a system for automatically inspecting a surface of an object such as an aircraft (54), a transport vehicle, a building or an engineering structure, said surface being liable to contain a defect.

The system is characterised in that it comprises a fleet comprising at least one flying robot (14a, 14b, 14c), each flying robot comprising a module for acquiring images of at least one portion of the surface to be inspected, and a module for processing the acquired images, which module is suitable for providing information representative of the state of each inspected surface portion, which information is called the processing result.

Claims

1. An automatic inspection system for automatically inspecting a surface of an object, said surface being liable to contain a defect, said system comprising, comprising at least one flying robot, each flying robot comprising:

an image acquisition module acquiring images of at least one portion of the surface to be inspected, and

a processing module processing the acquired images and providing a processing result comprising information representative of the state of each inspected surface portion, and

a management module for managing the fleet of robots, the management module determining, from a model of the surface to be inspected, a set of displacement instructions and image acquisition instructions for each robot of the fleet.

2. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1, wherein the image acquisition module of at least one robot of said fleet comprises at least one camera suitable for acquiring images within the visible light spectrum.

3. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1 further comprising a device presenting the results of each processing operation performed by each processing module of each robot of the fleet, and wherein in that each robot of the fleet comprises a communication module transmitting results of each processing operation to the presentation device.

4. The automatic inspection system according to claim 3, wherein the image acquisition module of at least one robot of said fleet comprises at least one camera suitable for acquiring images within the visible light spectrum and wherein the management module and the presentation device are arranged in a control device.

5. The automatic inspection system according to claim 4, wherein the control device comprises a human-machine interface suitable for displaying a 3D model of the surface to be inspected and for displaying a representation of a position of each robot of the fleet relative to the surface to be inspected in real time.

6. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1, wherein each robot of the fleet comprises a location determination module, suitable for combining each processing result with a location of said processing result relative to a coordinate system with regard to the surface to be inspected.

7. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1, wherein each robot of the fleet comprises an emergency module detecting a robot malfunction and, using a set of emergency tasks determined according to a position of the robot of the fleet relative to the object, said robot of the fleet performing at least one emergency task in the event of a malfunction.

8. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1, wherein each robot of the fleet comprises an obstacle detection module, whereby each robot of the fleet is suitable for performing an avoidance task to avoid at least one obstacle detected by the obstacle detection module.

9. The automatic inspection system according to claim 1, wherein the fleet comprises at least one rolling robot, each rolling robot comprising:

a module for acquiring images of at least one portion of the surface to be inspected, and

a module for processing the acquired images, and providing and a processing result comprising information representative of the state of each portion of the inspected surface.

10. A method for using an automatic inspection comprising:

determining a set of instructions allocated to each robot of a fleet of robots,

carrying out a multiplicity of tasks by each robot of the fleet, said tasks comprising at least one acquisition operation of an image of a portion of a surface liable to contain a defect, and at least one processing operation of said image in order to detect a potential defect on the surface,

transmitting the result of said processing operation of each robot to a presentation device, and

presenting said processing result to a human operator in said presentation device.

11. The method of use according to claim 10, wherein the transmitting of the result of said processing operation by each robot is carried out after each processing operation.

12. A method for automatically inspecting a surface of an object, said surface being liable to contain a defect, the method comprising:

acquiring images of at least one portion of the surface to be inspected by each flying robot of a fleet of robots comprising at least one flying robot,

processing the acquired images in order to provide a processing result comprising information representative of the state of each inspected surface portion, and

determining, based on a model of the surface to be inspected, a set of displacement instructions and image acquisition instructions for each robot of the fleet.