Infrared thermography is a condition monitoring technique that, from a measurement of the radiant heat pattern emitted by a material, is able to determine regions or points of increased or reduced heat emission that can indicate the presence of an imperfection in the investigated material. The result of an infrared thermographic investigation is a sequence of thermograms or thermal images, in other words a picture of temperature, that can be further processed for qualitative and quantitative purposes. Such images can be presented in either false color or black and white format. In the present work, the philosophy and history of thermal–infrared imaging are reviewed. Moreover, the different evaluation approaches (passive and active), as well as many standards related to infrared thermography are discussed. Finally, various applications of the transient thermography approach are briefly presented
Mobile robots performing aircraft visual inspection play a vital role in the future automated aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations. Autonomous navigation requires understanding the surroundings to automate and enhance the visual inspection process. The current state of neural network (NN) based obstacle detection and collision avoidance techniques are suitable for well-structured objects. However, their ability to distinguish between solid obstacles and low-density moving objects is limited, and their performance degrades in low-light scenarios. Thermal images can be used to complement the low-light visual image limitations in many applications, including inspections. This work proposes a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) fusion architecture that enables the adaptive fusion of visual and thermographic images. The aim is to enhance autonomous robotic systems’ perception and collision avoidance in dynamic environments. The model has been tested with RGB and thermographic images acquired in Cranfield’s University hangar, which hosts a Boeing 737-400 and TUI hangar. The experimental results prove that the fusion-based CNN framework increases object detection accuracy compared to conventional models.
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