Augmented Reality-Enhanced Corrosion Control System (ARECCS)

Enhanced Inspection

Problem Statement: Corrosion and defects are the true enemy of the United States military—impacting its ability to combat every adversary. Sustainment operations need the latest Corrosion Control systems to perform work effectively and efficiently. Returning weapons systems to service in the shortest time possible is the goal of every sustainment organization, and there is no shortage of technologies empowering maintainers to identify what needs to be fixed. The problem is that these detection systems do not work together, aggregate data, and empower maintenance planners to literally see all of the available data and plan mitigation based on a complete understanding of the vehicle’s condition.

The Innovation: ARCS Aviation’s Augmented Reality-Enhanced Corrosion Control System (ARECCS) leverages existing, proven technologies to power a new results application, presenting corrosion data visually in AR headsets and tablets. ARECCS is an aggregation system that ingests data from inspection and detection systems such as paint/coating thickness scanners, Non-destructive inspection test sets, and visual inspection, tracks this data to the tail number of an aircraft, and tags the data to the precise location on the aircraft skin where each measurement was taken. ARECCS then makes this data available as visual overlay data through AR glasses and a tablet-based digital twin. End users now easily review sets of data from different Corrosion Control system scans that were taken on a single aircraft, turning data sets on and off as needed to assess repair needs.

Benefits to the DOW: ARECCS is ready to be deployed to all maintenance operations, including contested and contingency locations. It not only improves understanding of the state of the aircraft, it enables planners to make decisions based on a complete picture, increasing the efficiency of the repair cycle, saving time, and reducing the risk of re-work. ARECCS is a complete solution because it can aggregate data from all of the standalone systems claiming to be that one magical answer but providing just a single measurement or image dataset.

Innovation Challenges: Volatility in the availability of AR glasses—with even market leaders shutting down production in the last few years—is the highest risk variable. ARCS mitigates this risk using common platforms such as Unity and Open XR, as well as delivering results on a tablet. Integrating additional sensors in the future may pose a risk based on those sensors’ inherent ability to export data, but ARCS mitigates this through an API.

Technical Maturity/Demonstration Results: ARECCS is a production-ready system, available to make an immediate, substantial impact to maintenance operations. Customers are already requesting additional Corrosion Control systems be added, which is a straightforward process in most cases, as ARECCS was designed to allow for the regular addition of new systems. While developed for aircraft, ARECCS was designed for use with any vehicle.