Rolls-Royce Engine Maintenance Robots
Jet engine maintenance can be expensive and slow, thanks to their closed nature and the need to take the engine off the aircraft completely to perform some tasks. Rolls-Royce's Engine Maintenance Robots envision a future where that's not necessary. Developed in collaboration with the University of Nottingham and Harvard University, they include a set of collaborative Swarm robots that measure just 10mm in diameter and go inside the engine, sending live video back to the mechanics and speeding up inspections. They get inside the engine via snake-like Flare robots that travel through the engine like an endoscope and are helped by permanent periscope robots named Inspect. Finally, a remote boreblending robot would allow a maintenance team to install it inside the engine, then hand over operation to remote specialists who could then perform more complex maintenance tasks.
