Circular Path Generation for Toroidal Cavity Inspection

Abstract

Borescopes are a widely used technology for optically inspecting machinery from the inside. Recent solutions include enhanced metrology techniques for acquiring image data in high resolution as well as 3D surface information. These already foster more detailed health and damage inspections. However, both inspection and diagnosis strongly rely on the expertise of professionals. Despite their strong coupling, an increasing separation between these tasks is trending. Furthermore, many regions often cannot be inspected properly due to limitations in accessibility and hardware, which is particularly true within toroidal cavities. As a consequence, significant demands regarding emerging digitalization and automatization such as reproducibility, completeness or the steady and high quality of results cannot be fully satisfied. These drawbacks can be faced with a defined probe guidance while providing adjustability towards sensor characteristics. In this publication a novel approach with great automation capability is presented, facing the contactless and complete inspection of toroidal cavities, requiring no disassembly. The proposed solution is related to continuum robotics while based on tube forming technology coupled with a path planning strategy.