Metrological comparison of LiDAR and photogrammetric systems for deformation monitoring of aerospace parts

Abstract

The inspection of airframes and aerodynamic surfaces is a very important task in aeronautical maintenance. Traditionally, this labor has always been carried out by maintenance personnel, who manually checked all the parts of the fuselage, which is a great cost for the airlines. This article evaluates the feasibility of implementing low cost portable 3D scanning systems to perform these inspection tasks easily and accurately. A metrological comparison among a LIDAR Kinect One sensor, a single digital camera Sony Alpha 6000 using photogrammetry software and a stereoscopic ZED camera was performed. Their behavior is characterized as well as their main sources of error to determine which technology is the most suitable for inspecting aeronautical surfaces. Kinect LIDAR sensor shows the most promising results and opens the possibility to apply this technology to aircraft maintenance tasks in future.