WP1 R&D Mobility Fund | BrightSky at MRO Europe 2023

From October 17 to 19th, MRO Europe, the leading European event for the aftermarket of commercial aviation, took place at the Amsterdam RAI convention centre. It is the largest event of its kind in Europe with 450+ international exhibitors representing suppliers of all levels of the airline supply chain. More than 9000 visitors attended the event’s 25th anniversary and profited from the numerous networking opportunities and interesting displays of future technologies.

One of those presented innovation projects was the Generic Engineering Robot for Defect Assessment (GERDA).  Together with the Royal NLR, KLM Engineering and Maintenance exhibited a demo version of the robot, which is the result of their joint effort and the BrightSky consortium. GERDA has been designed to support shop technicians with their detailed inspections of various engine parts. These are often repetitive and time-consuming, which GERDA will make easier, offering improvement for employees and the company alike. Through the use of machine vision and advanced algorithms, the robot can detect, classify and measure defects. This allows the actual damage size to be compared to the allowed limits according to the engine manual but with less monotonous work for the inspectors and the additional benefits of doing so within a shorter timeframe and even higher accuracy.

Although the robot is already showing good results, a lot of work remains to be done to yield a fully autonomous aviation-approved inspection robot. Nonetheless, the demo version attracted a lot of interested visitors and fellow exhibitors, so we are looking forward to presenting the finalized robot in the future!