Design of a Virtual Borescope: A Presence Study

Increased emphasis on aircraft inspection to ensure aviation safety has resulted in the need for a better trained workforce of aircraft maintenance personnel. As almost 90% of inspection is visual in nature, it has led to the development of computer simulators to train human inspectors performing the inspection task. However, the lack of immersion and interaction has led to limited effectiveness in such simulators. This paper details the first phase of the development of a virtual borescope. Using a simple model of the turbine and stator of a Pratt and Whitney PT6 engine, the simulator was evaluated using a modified version of the Witmer-Singer Presence Questionnaire (PQ). Based on the responses of the expert participants, it was observed that the realism and interaction of the simulator was comparable to that of the actual borescope. Although the participants commented on the lack of constraints while interacting with the simulator, they experienced a high degree of correlation between the actions performed in the virtual simulator and the actual borescope inspection.