TWI in conjunction with Alastair Poole, joint PhD student at TWI and Strathclyde University, has just completed the development of a prototype Autonomous and Guided Robotic Inspection system.
Traditional Robotic Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) scanning is a lengthy process, typically requiring time consuming manual path planning and accurate digital twin alignment procedures. The development presented here enables path planning and scanning without a digital twin.
This work has resulted in a fast and easy to use pipeline for autonomous NDT inspection.
Environmental and part data collected with a depth camera is used to plan collision-free paths and approach trajectories for a COBOT. The scanning path of the COBOT end effector is then deployed with online corrections: force control ensures sensor to surface contact is maintained, while laser data orients the probe tool normal to the surface.
Ultrasonic inspection data is collected alongside the robot's live position to create high quality C-scan data of the inspected part in real-time. Deployment is safe for on-site use due to the COBOT deployment method.
For more information on TWI’s robotic automated inspection capability please visit our Advanced NDT page.
This equipment has been purchased as part of an initiative known as AEMRI (Advanced Engineering Materials Research Institute), which is funded by the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO) using European Regional Development Funds (ERDF).
