SPIDER: Tiny, Self-Propelled Blimp Inspector

Lockheed Martin has created a robot that can find and repair tiny holes on blimps and airships. SPIDER (Self-Propelled Instrument for Airship Damage Evaluation and Repair) works with Lockheed's new hybrid airship, which is designed to move heavy cargo into areas without with little to no infrastructure. Over two-thirds of the world's land area and more than half the world's population have no direct access to paved roads. SPIDER uses two magnetic halves, one to shine a bright LED light outside the blimp and one that senses this light from the inside to expose holes and problem areas. It can then move its patching mechanism over the hole, repair it, and then take before and after pictures of the fix, allowing a pair of human eyes to inspect it later. Before SPIDER, the only way to search for tiny pinholes was to manually check the surface area with a high-powered light.

Transcript

00:00:01 [Music] one of the challenges facing the Airship industry is locating the tiny pin holes found in the airships envelope today this process requires a crew of workers both inside and outside the envelope carrying a bright light to find the airas that need repair this process is long tedious and manual meet spider an autonomous robot created at the locki

00:00:29 Martin skunkworks that solves this challenge spider scans the envelope finds the pin holes and then patches them we created spider to allow for inspection of the envelope in parallel with final assembly and maintenance actions this significantly reduces the number of man hours required for efficient operations of the Airship spider is composed of two halves

00:00:50 the inner and outer have magnetically couple across the envelope to allow the robot to scan the entire surface the outer half of the robot shines light on the Airship surface while the inner half detects pin holes using light sensors from inside the dark envelope once a hole is located spider aligns its patchy mechanism Over the Hole repairs it and then sends a before

00:01:10 and after picture of the area to the central processing station for verification the central Hub also handles all Cooperative searching of the envelope if a robot fails search patterns can be changed on the other robots to efficiently complete whole inspection we're not only revolutionizing Transportation operations with the hybrid airship but

00:01:30 we're also creating new technologies such as the patented spider to help efficiently and effectively maintain the airship