Development of an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Rapid Aircraft Defect Detection

Visual investigation methods are conventionally applied during structural integrity inspection and defect detection. Inaccessible zones and field inspection restrictions are applicable to tall buildings, large bridges, dams, power plants as well as large commercial airliners. Through the fast technological progress of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and recent advances in digital image processing techniques, conventional visual inspection could soon become obsolete. A defect detection approach utilising the advanced UAV and digital image processing techniques is proposed in this paper. This study is part of a bigger research investigating into the ability of an advanced UAV to autonomously traverse over an aircraft and accurately detect locations of defects on the aircraft skin to assist in further investigation of subsurface defects utilizing thermal and ultrasound techniques. The main aim of the research study is to minimize the inspection time of a commercial aircraft to the order of an hour.