AK-ILS: An Active learning method based on Kriging for the Inspection of Large Surfaces

Tolerance verification permits to check the product conformity and to verify assumptions made by the designer. For conformity assessment, the uncertainty associated with the values of the measurands must be known. In fact, to evaluate form characteristics of large aircraft structure workpieces, sampling is required, so a measurement error is present: exact estimation of form characteristics would require complete knowledge of the surface. To minimise this measurement error, this paper presents a Kriging-based procedure to identify the minimum of measured points to check the conformity with a given confidence level. The proposed method is validated on a simple example of orientation tolerance and then performed to inspect the form defect on three large aircraft workpieces. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.