CINNABAR PROJECT: EXAMINING REQUIREMENTS FOR USER ACCEPTANCE OF AIRCRAFT STRUCTURE INSPECTION IN AUGMENTED REALITY

Kurzfassung

The inspection of the outer skin of an aircraft is a crucial part of aircraft maintenance. Every dent or buckle must be inspected and cataloged to ensure continued airworthiness. This process is a lot of work for the inspector, especially when localizing and documenting damages. Finding already cataloged damages from the 2D documentation on the 3D surface is mentally demanding. This paper examines whether an Augmented Reality approach is applicable to help overcome these challenges. For this reason, a HoloLens-based prototype of the dent and buckle chart is developed and tested in the field. This paper focuses on the methodology and execution of a user study to explore the Augmented Reality approach. The study results show that maintainers appreciate the application as a solution to dent and buckle chart challenges. They suggest requirements for user acceptance and give insights into the current workflow. The main challenges for the application are the reliability of the system and the intuitive interaction with the application. Opportunities include better data consistency and faster execution of the task. Establishing general requirements advances the digitalization of aircraft maintenance, as other use cases can utilize the study results.