Aircraft Inspection Drone: From Cherry Pickers to ABB

An aircraft inspection drone flies a planned path around a parked airliner and photographs its skin, so engineers can look for dents, lightning damage and paint defects without climbing to the top of the fuselage. This post follows the job from cherry pickers and gantries to the first drone trials at easyJet and Airbus, then to this autumn's projects at Japan Airlines and ST Engineering, and asks where ABB robots could help. Engine work is a different story, told in our post on jet engine MRO.

A Donecle drone inspects an aircraft during maintenance in an Air France Industries hangar in Toulouse, 2017. Photo: Josselin Bequet / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How mechanics checked airliners from cherry pickers

An aircraft has to come out of service for an exterior check whenever damage is known or suspected: a lightning, ice or bird strike in the air, debris on the runway, or a bump from a service vehicle on the ground. To reach the fuselage and wings, engineers set up gantries or ride lifting equipment such as a cherry picker, then work their way around the aircraft part by part, with the risk of a fall. Airbus said in 2018 that a traditional visual check of the upper fuselage, done from the ground or a telescopic platform, could take up to one day. The checks were done mainly by eye, sometimes with tools, and an inspector's eyes tire over time.

A KLM cherry picker raises a worker beside the tail of an airliner at Schiphol, July 1960. Photo: Anefo / Nationaal Archief via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

WIRED reported in 2015 that a commercial jet is hit by lightning about once a year. The aircraft is built to take it, but a strike can damage fuel valves, power feeders or electrical systems, and the outside signs are burn marks, small holes and missing bits at extremities such as the wing tips. Finding them meant a manual inspection that took a full day. Some of the first inspection robots crawled. Invert Robotics, whose suction robots began by inspecting stainless steel dairy tanks, trialled an aircraft system with Air New Zealand in 2016, and Lufthansa Technik built MORFI, which clings to the fuselage with vacuum pads and looks for cracks with heat pulses and infrared cameras.

A US Navy structural mechanic works from a ladder under a P-8A Poseidon during a routine aircraft inspection at Keflavik Air Base, Iceland, April 2025. Photo: U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In 2015 easyJet tested an automated drone from Blue Bear Systems Research and Createc, the RISER drone, first built to measure radiation and map rooms in hazardous places. It flew about three feet from the aircraft, using lasers to keep its distance, and finished in a few hours a check that used to take a full day. In April 2018 Airbus showed its Advanced Inspection Drone, developed with its testing subsidiary Testia. It follows a preset path with a camera and a laser obstacle sensor, and software compares the photos with the aircraft's digital mock-up and writes the report. Airbus put the whole process at three hours, including 30 minutes of image capture, once EASA had approved it.

Airbus's Advanced Inspection Drone flying beside the fuselage of an A320 in a hangar. Photo: Airbus

Drones in airline hangars this autumn

On 11 September Japan Airlines and the French drone maker Donecle launched Japan's first joint project with fully autonomous drones for exterior aircraft inspections. Donecle's Iris GVI drones fly around the aircraft in JAL's hangars without touching it, using built-in obstacle detection, and photograph the airframe to the same standard whatever the operator's skill. The drone is 855 mm across and weighs 3.7 kg with its battery, and its image analysis maps and measures defects. Donecle's drones are listed in both the Airbus and Boeing maintenance manuals. JAL wants to spend the time saved on predictive maintenance and plans faster checks after unscheduled lightning strikes, which can delay flights today.

A Donecle inspection drone flies close to the fuselage of an aircraft at Air France Industries in Toulouse, 2017. Photo: Josselin Bequet / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In Singapore, ST Engineering opened its fourth airframe maintenance site, at Changi Creek, on 9 October. Drones are being brought in there to inspect the top of each aircraft, so technicians do not need scaffolding or lifts for that part. AI tools scan the video for corrosion, paint defects and dents, and the inspection takes half a day with two engineers reviewing footage, against a day and a half for up to three technicians checking by hand. For the underside, which the drones' cameras cannot capture, ST Engineering uses a camera on a robotic arm with AI models that point out defects and missing parts. It already helps with engine parts, cutting the check of a component from about four hours to 30 minutes.

A Skydio X2D drone inspects a KC-10 Extender at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, November 2022. Photo: Mauricio Campino / U.S. Air Force via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

We found no ABB drone and no ABB robot inspecting aircraft. The closest fit is the camera arm that ST Engineering uses under the aircraft. ABB's OmniCore EyeMotion software lets any OmniCore-powered ABB robot use third-party cameras or sensors to recognise its surroundings in real time, for jobs from item sorting to quality inspection, and ABB says it cuts commissioning time by up to 90% compared with custom solutions. Paired with ABB's Automatic Path Planning Online, the robot plans collision-free paths around obstacles and moving objects as it works. An ABB arm sweeping a camera along the belly of an aircraft is still only a possibility. Our post on aircraft depainting covers another hangar job.

An ABB robot with a camera sorts parts on a table, shown at the launch of ABB's OmniCore EyeMotion vision software. Photo: ABB

Where hangar inspection robots go next

The next step is pairing machines. Air-Cobot, a French project launched in January 2013, led by Akka Technologies and started by Airbus Innovations, built a 230 kg wheeled robot with a pan-tilt-zoom camera and a 3D scanner to inspect the lower parts of an aircraft. It was tested at Airbus and Air France Industries, and the plan was to couple it with a drone for the upper parts. ST Engineering's split, with drones on top and a camera arm underneath, follows the same idea. JAL and Donecle also want to move beyond hangar tests to unscheduled lightning checks and regular monitoring of paint condition, working with Japan's transport ministry, MLIT.

The Air-Cobot inspection robot drives under an Airbus A320 in an Air France Industries hangar in Toulouse, 2016. Photo: Stanislas Larnier / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Outdoors is harder. Blue Bear said in 2019 that it hoped to fly its inspection drone outdoors as well as in hangars, which would need approval from other airport users, and it imagined a drone carried on board for use at remote locations. Inside the hangar, robots are taking over the fetching too. ST Engineering uses autonomous mobile robots to bring parts, tools and materials from storage to the hangar floor, and one such project should free about 7,800 working hours a year. ABB's mobile robots include forklift AMRs for pallets and smaller AMRs that move goods between heights or from the floor, though we found none working in a hangar.

ABB's Flexley Stack F712 forklift with Flexley Tug and Flexley Mover robots in a test hall. Photo: ABB

Regulators set the pace. In October the FAA wrote that robotic systems and small drones can help reach elevated, confined or awkward inspection areas, but unless regulations or approved maintenance programmes allow it, they do not replace required inspection methods, procedures or personnel qualifications. Airbus needed EASA approval for its drone process, and Donecle's place in the Airbus and Boeing manuals makes it easier for airlines to fit into their workflows. Adoption is not automatic either: SR Technics stopped its robot tests with Invert Robotics. People still review the footage, so training matters, and a robot cell around an aircraft can be planned in RobotStudio before anything moves in the hangar.

An engineer works on a tablet beside an ABB robot sorting coloured parts with camera guidance, from ABB's OmniCore EyeMotion launch. Photo: ABB

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