Lockheed Martin is hoping their hybrid airship is the future of remote cargo delivery. One of the challenges with the fabric skin covering the airship is that it is susceptible to pinholes. The current process is a tedious and manual one that involves a crew of workers located both inside and outside the envelope of the airship. The workers carry a bright light to locate the tiny holes that need repairing.

Lockheed Martin repair crew looking for pinholes in the skin of a hybrid airship. Source: Lockheed Martin

Inner and outer halves of Spider robot; Source: Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works developed an autonomous robot named Spider, which they describe as a "self-propelled instrument for damage evaluation and repair," to locate and patch the holes in parallel with final assembly and maintenance actions. Spider consists of two halves that are magnetically coupled together. The inner half rests against the inside of the airship envelope while the outer half is on the outside. The outer half shines a light on the airship envelope surface, while the inner half uses light sensors to detect tiny pinholes.

Once a hole is located, Spider patches it and sends before and after pictures to the central processing station for verification. The central processing station monitors all Spider activity and if one spider fails can automatically change the search pattern of the remaining robots to ensure the entire envelope is inspected.