An inspection continuum robot with tactile sensor based on electrical impedance tomography for exploration and navigation in unknown environment

Purpose: This paper aims to introduce an aircraft engine inspection robot (AEIR) which can go in the internal of the aircraft engine without collision and detect damage for engine blades. Design/methodology/approach: To obtain the position and pose information of the blades inside the engine, a novel tactile sensor based on electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is developed, which could provide location and direction information when it contacts with an unknown object. In addition, to navigate the continuum robot, a control method is proposed to control the continuum robot, which can control the continuum robot to move along the pre-planned path and reduce the deviation from the planned path. Findings: Experiment results show that the average error of contact location measurement of the tactile sensor is 0.8 mm. The average error relative to the size (diameter of 18 mm) of the sensor is 4.4%. The continuum robot can successfully reach the target position through a gap of 30 mm and realize the spatial positioning of blades. The validity of the AEIR for engine internal blade detection is verified. Originality/value: The aero-engine inspection robot developed in this paper can replace human to detect engine blades and complete different detection tasks with different kinds of sensors.