UTILISATION OF UAV FOR AIRCRAFT SURFACE INSPECTION

Abstract

Aircraft, both commercial and military, should be subjected to visual inspections to assess damage and defects that could lead to a potential mishap in the form of accidents/incidents. More often, these visual checks are done manually by the maintenance staff. Maintenance personnel must carefully examine the aircraft’s skin which is a tedious and challenging process and takes a lot of time. This thesis presents two methods for automatic generation of waypoints that an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) can utilize for inspection on an aircraft surface. Firstly, the vision sensor is finalized along with its specifications, followed by the automatic generation of waypoints using the Coverage Path Planning (CPP) algorithm to cover the entire aircraft before utilizing the image processing techniques to find the structural deformities. CPP is an algorithm used to calculate a path such that the whole target environment or area of interest is covered. The spiral and back and Forth method on polygons with a flat surface with straight edges is utilized to generate the waypoints.