Non-Contact, 3-D Measurement for Aircraft Surfaces

In an Air Logistics Center (ALC) environment, where modification and maintenance of fighter (and other) aircraft is performed, there exists an urgent need for the efficient and accurate verification of work performed. This is of utmost importance whenwork is performed on the airfoil or control surfaces. Current techniques using mechanical templates, triangulation, mechanical articulated linkage devices, or laser scanning suffer from being too slow, cumbersome, or can not meet the resolutionrequirements. Photon-X proposes a Non-Contact, 3-D Measurement System that can meet the ALC needs. The system is passive, simple to use and very portable. The camera-based system uses patent-pending technology to perform high-resolution 3-D mapping ofsurfaces over a wide area. The output of the Non-Contact, 3-D Measurement System can be compared against CAD reference files and has a resolution sufficient to detect dents, deformations, etc., caused by deformations or processing operations. DuringPhase I, a prototype system will be designed. In addition, a demonstration of the underlying technology will be performed by measuring reference aircraft surfaces and comparing the results with CAD representations. The Phase I prototype design and thetesting activities will provide a low-risk, rapid transition into pre-production prototype to be developed in Phase II. A high resolution, 3-D measurement system will have many uses in manufacturing and industrial activities. It could be used forquality inspection of manufactured parts, locating parts for automatic operations, aligning parts for assembly, reverse engineering machined parts and documenting as-built assemblies. A system that provides streaming real-time output would also providestress and deformation analysis information. Commercial applications of the system include: manufacturing and inspection of aircraft and automotive assemblies, and the motion picture industry, where such a system can be used to quickly and cost effectivelymodel dynamic 3D objects and directly insert them into a scene. Commercial applications of the underlying technology include 3-D tracking of human motion, 3-D facial recognition and ID, and spatial-Phase tagging applications for tracking knownitems/targets in adverse conditions (i.e. firefighters through smoke).