One thing is true in any industry – time is money. So when the Rolls-Royce Innovation Hub came up with the Intelligent Borescope that can reduce the time it takes to inspect an aircraft engine by 75% and could save up to £100m in inspection costs over five years, they knew they had created something that was not only cost effective but could potentially transform the future of aviation inspection procedures.
“Our new Intelligent Borescope capability brings together cutting-edge technology and AI in a way that has never been used in the aviation industry before,” says Adriano Pulisciano, Rolls-Royce Imaging and Computer Vision Specialist.
An average aircraft does 20,000 flights in its lifetime – that’s the equivalent of 60 million miles or 2,400 times around the world. The engines on the aircraft work hard and so regular inspections are carried out to make sure everything is in good working order. There are around 20,000 components in any engine and one way of getting inside the engine to look at them is with a borescope.
“A routine borescope inspection can take an aircraft out of service for 12 hours– that’s 12 hours that the aircraft is on the ground and not in the air making money for our customers,” adds Pulisciano. “The Intelligent Borescope is an industry first AI engine inspection which dramatically reduces the time taken to complete the measurement and sentencing part of certain inspections.”
The Intelligent Borescope uses a state-of-the-art Waygate Technologies RVI inspection unit enabled with AI Apps to capture data from the engine as it is driven by a Rhinestahl CTS FutureDrive Electronic Turning Tool. The AI Apps, which Rolls-Royce developed with Roke Manor Research and integrated into the borescope inspection unit with Waygate Technologies, help identify any issues with the engine before sending all the data directly to our Rolls-Royce Cloud for further analysis. Connectivity to the Cloud means that certain inspections could even be completed offline once the data has been captured. This level of automation has never been seen in the aviation industry before.
“This technology will not only speed up inspection times, but also transform many aspects of our business through the capture and analysis of high quality standardised data from all of our engines, which can be exploited to maximise the efficiency of our entire fleet and improve future design,” explains Pulisciano.