Rolls-Royce robots promise maintenance revolution

At a press conference during the Farnborough Airshow, the engine-maker provided details of four separate projects it is working on. They involve different academic and industrial partners and are at varying stages of development, but each has the potential to significantly reduce maintenance time and improve engine availability.

Alongside Harvard University, Rolls is developing swarm robots that can perform on-wing engine inspections. The beetle-like bots will be about 10mm in diameter and equipped with cameras to provide a live video feed while crawling through aero engines. According to Dr James Kell, Rolls-Royce on-wing technology specialist, swarm robots could help map the internal engine area and negate the need for time-consuming manual inspections.

“We thought, rather than doing that traditionally, we could put cameras on the end of small walking beetles and have them work in a team, whereby…collaboratively we start to map the whole environment,” said Kell.