General Design of Endoscopic Inspection Robot Faced to Aeroengine Stator Blades

Endoscopic inspection technology is mainly used in regular maintenance for aeroengines. However, there are some inner components that are hard to be observed by this means, such as stator blades, which leaves many potential safety troubles. Recently there have been some robots emerging for aeroengine maintenance and inspection, which have undergone significant changes compared to current methods. But at present they are still unable to achieve in engineering applications for their immaturities. To increase the possibility of problem solving, this paper provided a summary of them, and presented a novel approach against their shortcomings, which involves an endoscopic inspection robot. According to the general design of this robot, the typical structures of both main parts, the snakelike arm and the passive blade grasper were given.