Contact

VISTA coordinator

Dr. Ettore Stella

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

Piazzale Aldo Moro 7

00185, Roma | Italy

Phone: +39 08 0592 9426

E-mail: ettore.stella@cnr.it

Project partners:

VISTA – Vision-based Inspection Systems for automated Testing of Aircraft interiors

Automated post-assembly testing of aircraft interiors

The VISTA project aims to post-assembly testing of aircraft interior installations in both cabin and cargo units in order to ensure quality and reliability of located components. This goal will be pursued by the development and implementation of a multi-sensor platform and sensor processing algorithms, integrating on-board a mobile system and an interface for data transmission, able to provide efficient automated testing and quality reports.

Multi-sensor platform for position, gap and flush management and surface quality inspection

Multiple optical devices, including 3D LIDAR, omnidirectional laser profilometers, RGB-D, and (stereo) vision sensors, integrated with on-board image processing hardware, will be tested for the 3D modelling of the aircraft interior. In addition, the sensor suite will include line scan cameras for colour inspection of surface quality. All sensors will be integrated on an automated guided vehicle (AGV) that will collect and store sensor measurements, while traversing both cabin and cargo areas. The collection of full 3D models, i.e. 3D models augmented with metadata, such as colour, material and texture, will feed high-level algorithms that will automatically determine tolerances of the components with respect to positioning, gap and flush, and assess surface quality in terms of texture, colour, and defects.

AR interface for presentation of quality results

An interface for data transmission will be developed and tested for visualization and documentation, which will be made available to the human operators via suitable interfaces based on Augmented Reality (AR). Standard list visualization, interactive layers on a 2D visualization of the airplane and finally a 3D visualization equipped with digital layers, will be available.

Thanks to the interaction with the presented data, all technical and multimedia (texts, images and videos) will be viewable on mobile devices with a specific graphic interface included in the software.

Automation of testing to increase reliability and accuracy of results taking into account the human factor

The testing of aircraft interiors are typically performed by human operators. Automation is crucial to achieve the necessary level of reliability and accuracy of the testing results. The proposed VISTA solution will guarantee a larger impact than improving/redesigning standard automation solution under the challenging aerospace requirements. The VISTA concept is disruptive in terms of innovation in the instruments and procedures for interiors testing, introducing a high level of automation. Nevertheless, the VISTA solution will also take into account the human factor. Indeed, the VISTA technologies will be conceived to assist and support the workers improving their overall physical and cognitive involvement in the testing operations, by generating and displaying quality reports and providing an interface for data transmission.

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