The vacuum adhesion climbing robot provides motion on aircraft wings and fuselage. Mass = 20 kg. On-board control systems with teleoperation from an operator PC via a twisted pair. Flexible feet adjust to a range of surface curvatures. Vacuum sensors check for adequate adhesion before allowing robot motion before each walking step.

A 4-axis Cartesian scanner deploys NDT sensors. Mass = 22 kg. End-effecter repeatability = 1 mm.

NDT of rows of rivets using ultrasonic phase arrays, ultrasonic wheel probes, eddy currents and thermography. For thermograhy, the scanning arm is removed and replaced by a thermographic camera and heat source. The design uses a hierarchy of universal jonts in each foot, ankle and structure to provide the flexibilty to different surface curvatures but yet remain rigid when attached to the surface.

The paper describing this design was highly commended by the Industrial Robot Journal and CLAWAR 2006 conference.