Dance of the White Light Robots: A Closer Look at the Newest Inspection Technology in MRO

Not long ago, GE Aerospace brought revolutionary technology to some of the most crucial yet laborious work in aviation: Inspecting every nook and cranny of a high-pressure turbine (HPT), including one particular part that spins at tremendous speeds inside the very core of a jet engine. These exquisitely machined, nickel-based disks bear the blades of the HPT and their maintenance requires painstaking scrutiny. Even the most minor anomaly - a scratch or miniscule smudge of corrosion - requires professional judgment on which engineering disposition applies: whether the part should be accepted, repaired, or rejected.

Such meticulous examination takes time, so engineers at GE Aerospace Research in Niskayuna, New York, and GE Aerospace's Global Automation and Robotics Center in Bromont, Quebec, spent five years developing robotic inspectors to assist this arduous process - part of GE Aerospace's broader, decade-plus-long AI development effort. The first AI-guided "white light robot" inspectors were deployed in the maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) shop at the Services Technology Acceleration Center (STAC) in the fall of 2024.

Here's a closer look at the white light robots in action.

Standing in a universal workstation, two articulated industrial robots outfitted with white light optical scanners move closely over the entire surface of the high-precision part - in this case, a turbine disk for a GE90 engine. Like two ballroom dancers, the robots' movements are carefully choreographed by human operators and use AI to capture and analyze data with optimum accuracy, speed, and consistency, simultaneously creating a digital record of each part's condition. "Staring at the same part or feature for eight to 12 hours a day can make your head hurt," says Sam Blazek, GE Aerospace services technology leader for white light inspection, who in the not-so-distant past inspected parts "caveman style" - by hand, with a flashlight and mirror. "You're constantly twisting your head, eyes, and neck as you try to focus on each individual feature." Whereas this robot inspector slips right into the disk's interior. By performing each inspection on a standard digital platform, white light robots ensure a consistent flow of extremely fine-grained information. They record the part's serial number, assign a numerical value to any anomaly (whether dent, crack, corrosion, or fretting), and develop a consistent chronological narrative of the part that is instantly accessible in the cloud, indicating where repairs might make a part serviceable and providing a complete record of non-serviceable flaws. The first generation of white light robot technology captured images and digitally stitched them together. But line-scan cameras developed at GE Aerospace Research provide a higher quality, video-like stream that replicates what a human eye can see, displayed on a computer monitor. White light robot inspection reduces the noise from variations between human inspectors, whom it will also help to train. Rather than rely on predictions or simulations of likely wear and tear on a life-limited part (LLP), the collective data provides high-resolution information about the actual part. Once programmed and activated, the system doesn't need to be monitored for its entire operation time. "The goal is to mount a part for inspection, hit 'go,' let the system run while you go do another job, and come back to monitor the inspection on a screen," says Blazek. "A person still needs to be there to examine the screen and make the call. They just don't need to physically huddle around the part for hours on end to collect the data. We use their expertise where it's needed, which is in disposition." When Blazek joined the team at STAC, his deep domain expertise helped in the development of policies and procedures that, along with AI's sophisticated data storage, make it possible to scale and produce the second-gen system. "We're not trying to replace humans with this technology," Blazek says. "We want to replicate them. If we can automate some of the 'easier' repeatable, predictable aspects of this job, it frees our inspectors to focus on the technical issues that truly need our attention."