GE AEROSPACE INTRODUCES “MINI” ROBOT INSPECTOR

Just as robotics and imaging have helped to enable minimally invasive surgeries on patients that allow them to recover faster, these technologies also are enabling less invasive inspection and repair of jet engines on the wing to reduce downtime.

Meet GE Aerospace’s Sensiworm (Soft ElectroNics Skin-Innervated Robotic Worm), a highly intelligent, acutely sensitive soft robot that could serve as extra sets of eyes and ears for Aerospace service operators inside the engine. Today, these operators use highly advanced inspection instruments like a video borescope that provide extremely valuable inspection data but are limited in overall turbine coverage because of factors such as gravity that can cause the tip to naturally settle when not braced against a structure within the engine. Deploying self-propelling, compliant robots like Sensiworm would give operators virtually unfettered access in the future to perform inspections without having to disassemble the engine.

GE Aerospace’s Sensiworm robot has been developed with funding and support through SEMI Flex Tech, an industry-led public/private partnership focused on advancing innovative hybrid electronics developments like Sensiworm. The program is funded by the US Army Research Lab. The GE team also is partnered with Binghamton University, which is home to a world-class Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing (CAMM), and UES, Inc, an Ohio-based R&D organization that works often with commercial and military partners on advanced technologies in multiple areas that include aerospace and electronics research.

About Sensiworm
Sensiworm is a highly compliant soft robot that resembles an inchworm. It is self-contained, with on-board power, compute, and pressure resources. The team has demonstrated its ability to move easily on and around the various crevasses and curves of jet engine parts to look for cracks and corrosion. In other lab-scale demonstrations, Sensiworm also has been shown to accurately inspect and measure the thickness of thermal barrier coatings on engine parts to determine if parts are maintaining the proper thickness.



Sensiworm could help further expand coverage and inspection capabilities inside an engine vs. the state-of-the-art borescope technologies presently used. Sensiworm can be deployed through the turbine inlet or exhaust of an engine and provide coverage of a much larger swath of the turbine that would otherwise be missed using traditional borescopes, bespoke robotic devices, or snake platforms utilizing conventional port access points. The goal is to provide on-wing service personnel with multiple sets of trusted eyes and ears inside the engine that have the ability to inspect and repair critical areas of the engine.