Automation of the handling of a metal component and insertion of a borescope into non-penetrating small holes using a robot arm

During drilling holes to aircraft hydraulic components, burrs occur at intersections of the holes. To prevent stress concentration and flow obstruction, deburring and chamfering are performed. These tasks are currently carried out manually by skilled workers. To reduce the workload and enhance production efficiency, automation of the entire process is required. In this paper, we focused on developing a system to automate the gripping and movement of a metal part, and insertion of a borescopes into small holes. Position detection of the part was performed by using rectangle detection. The gripping and movement of the part was carried out using a robotic hand based on the acquired position information. In the insertion experiments conducted on three blind holes and one through hole, the insertion success rate was 96% for all holes. Due to some manual processes involved, complete automation was not achieved.