Localisation of Ultrasonic NDT Data Using Hybrid Tracking of Component and Probe

Knowledge about the location of a defect is essential for damage assessment. In terms of a digitalised maintenance, inspection data is combined with position information. The presented approach regards the manual ultrasonic inspection, where the ultrasonic probe and the inspected component are both hand-held. By using markerless tracking technologies, it is possible to track the component without any markers. The ultrasonic probe is tracked by a more stable marker-based tracking technology. This results in a hybrid tracking system, which allows a referencing of the non-destructive testing (NDT) data directly to the local coordinate system of the 3D model that corresponds to the inspected component. Transferring this approach to other manual inspection technologies allows for a superimposition of recorded NDT data without any postprocessing or transformation. A better damage assessment is thus enabled. The inspection system, the inspection tool calibration and the camera registration process are described and analysed in detail. This work is focused on the analysis of the system accuracy, which is realised by using a reference body.