New Player in Military Aircraft Maintenance Field

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The Spanish Air Force plans to drastically reduce maintenance inspections for large military aircraft and increase overall fleet availability. The air force will support the development of Airbus’ drone and augmented reality-based maintenance inspection services.

The technology relies on drones equipped with sensors and high-definition cameras to scan, in a matter of hours and not days, the exterior of an aircraft undergoing a maintenance inspection.  A secured connection allows data and information generated to be displayed on tablets and augmented reality glasses, allowing staff to quickly identify and apply maintenance procedures and corrective actions while ensuring all inspection and maintenance procedures are formally and fully recorded on the maintenance log.  Not only does this technology reduce the maintenance inspection time, it supports the early detection of defects and helps guarantee quality and post-maintenance airworthiness.

This digital innovation technology will initially be trialed on Spanish Air Force A400M aircraft, with options to extend the technology to other aircraft, including the C295 and the CN235.

The tests with the Spanish Air Force will allow Airbus to use real user data to consolidate the algorithms for safe autonomous flight of the drone around an aircraft thus avoiding the use of scaffolding and heavy mobile equipment that risks damaging the aircraft. Moreover, it will also allow to process the terabytes of images and data as a deep learning library that allows for the development of a robust Artificial Intelligence-based defects detection system.