TESTIA
Aeronautic Augmented Reality for all Industries

In the world of aerospace, augmented reality (AR) plays a vital role in providing the much needed support for quality services and inspection checks on airbus production facilities. However, many companies are lagging behind to harness the complete potential of AR to ensure the highest level of checks as well as carry out other inspection to reduce time and cost. The real challenge faced by the developers of AR tools is to bring in reliable and accurate tracking solution to synchronize the “virtual information” into the reality. With a goal to empower firms to augment their quality checks in a much easier and broader way, TESTIA (An Airbus Group Company) based in Toulouse known for its Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) expertise. “Testia was first created to quality inspection services for airbus supply chain. Now with AR as its new add-on in Testia’s portfolio, we are offering more than only solutions for Inspection and NDT,” says Denis Gardin, Managing Director, TESTIA.

TESTIA’s new age technology in aerospace is developed by Airbus Group Innovations harnessing innovations like AR to address the new need of the market. The company’s Airbus AR solutions comprise of different modules like inspection or quality control, assembly, easy geolocalization, maintenance as well as support. Prior to offering each new solution, Airbus deploys and tests the modules for at least a year and makes improvements with the help of feedbacks received from the users that have implemented the modules in the shop floor. “We use AR as geo-localization to help operators avoid missing out a spot where they have to perform the job,” adds Aurelien Cottet, Head of Smart Mobile Worker, TESTIA. Additionally, Airbus has been collaborating closely with Panasonic’s R&D team to provide a robust and performance tablets for an industrial use environment.

TESTIA’s new business line of solutions comprises of Smart Augmented Reality Tool (SART), an AR technology that can be operated on a tablet, a projector or glasses, superimposing an “As Designed” Digital Mock-Up to the “As Built” Reality. This solution was initially used for inspecting Airbus A380 fuselages in order to reduce inspection times on system supports from three weeks to three days.

The idea was to combine real images with those from digital mock-ups on a tablet equipped with a camera. “This system is fully integrated into the information system, and runs on windows which can be configured into any kind of situation that can be found in the industry,” beams Cottet.

The company’s offerings of NDT find adoptions across many different use cases. For instance, one of their clients faced the problem of undergoing time-consuming inspections and needed to avoid missing any non conformity that may lead to financial impacts. By adopting TESTIA’s hybrid solution of AR Tool, the client was able to optimize the time invested by inspectors and focus on operations that add more value, enabling the timely delivery of parts to customers.

“We believe the core capability of AR to geolocalize anything in a closed environment will lead to its rapid implementation and innovation in the coming years. For this, we believe in developing solutions and training modules that complement and support the use of this technology on site,” expresses Cottet. Foreseeing a wide spread impact of AR in the production departments of aerospace, ship, railway and energy industries, TESTIA is equipped to augment its offerings with better maintenance and support features.