Gecko Robotics and L3Harris Team up on XR Technology for Aircraft Maintenance
Maintenance times for military aircraft are increasing, resulting in planes remaining in hangers for longer periods. High-resolution images from inspector drones offer a possible solution to this issue.
Pennsylvania-based start-up Gecko Robotics and L3Harris have partnered to address aircraft maintenance challenges. They announced that they will use drones to capture thousands of images of aircraft and create digital twins, which may significantly reduce maintenance turnaround times.
Gecko Robotics’ “extended reality capability” allows engineers to remotely check on a plane’s condition and assess the health of a platform, regardless of where the fleet is located. According to Gecko Robotics, inspections can even detect issues invisible to the naked eye.
The duration required for both corrective and preventative maintenance on U.S. military aircraft has been extending as the aircraft age, leading to decreased readiness rates. Using drones to take 10,000 high-definition photographs of aircraft, full-scale digital models of planes can be built by stitching together the images in Gecko's Cantilever software, creating a digital twin of a single aircraft. Machine-vision object-detection software assists inspectors in identifying critical maintenance issues, like joints and dents more quickly than traditional methods, as drones can maneuver around planes more efficiently than engineers using ladders or scaffolds. This allows offsite inspections to occur without a full traveling crew, improving operational efficiency and reducing overhead costs.
The technology is described as providing a 360-degree “extended reality” environment, enhancing the view of the real world rather than creating an immersive virtual world. Sean Ling, General Manager of modernization and modifications at L3Harris, stated: “A year of prototype testing with Gecko in collaboration with multiple military customers has identified numerous applications for this technology, including virtual visual inspections, configuration review, and robust defect identification.” L3Harris is apparently already implementing the system on their planes.
“The readiness and modernization of military aircraft is a critical ‘line of effort’ for the Air Force,” said Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics. “Gecko’s partnership with L3Harris will deploy world class technology to solve real problems, putting us at the forefront of helping the U.S. military build, maintain and modernize the assets necessary to defend our nation.”
Gecko Robotics was founded in 2013. The company’s robots can scale vertical surfaces of planes and ships to detect structural integrity flaws. In addition to the Air Force, Gecko Robotics is collaborating with the US Navy to utilize wall-climbing robots for detailed inspections of ship hulls, potentially reducing maintenance times for certain vessels from 11 days to one day. The deployment of drones—both wall-scaling and aerial—has been increasingly adopted within the defense industrial sector to monitor the condition of aircraft, naval vessels, shipyards, and other critical infrastructure.
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