The focus of this thesis is to provide virtualization methods for a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) setup that interfaces physical Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) scanning environments into virtual spaces through virtual-physical interfacing and path planning. In these environments, a probe used for NDE mounted as the end-effector of a robot arm will actuate and acquire data along the surface of a Material Under Test (MUT) within virtual and physical spaces. Such configurations are practical for applications that require damage analysis of certain geometrically complex parts, ranging from automobile to aerospace to military industries. The pipeline of the designed 5D actuation system starts by virtually reconstructing the physical MUT and its surrounding environment, generating a toolpath along the surface of the reconstructed MUT, conducting a physical scan along the toolpath which synchronizes the robot's end effector position with retrieved NDE data, and post processing the obtained data. Most of this thesis will focus on virtual topics, including reconstruction from stereo camera images and toolpath planning. Virtual mesh generation of the MUT and surrounding environment are found with stereo camera images, where methods for camera positioning, registration, filtering, and reconstruction are provided. Path planning around the MUT uses a customized path-planner, where a 2D grid of rays is generated where each ray intersection across the surface of the MUT's mesh provides the translation and rotation of waypoints for actuation. Experimental setups include both predefined meshes and reconstructed meshes found from several real carbon-fiber automobile components using an Intel RealSense D425i stereo camera, showing both the reconstruction and path planning results. A theoretical review is also included to discuss analytical prospects of the system. The final system is designed to be automated to minimize human interaction to conduct scans, with later reports planned to discuss the scanning and post processing prospects of the system.
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