General Atomics’ Approach

The current approach that GA has employed to attempt to map the inner geometry of the barrel after each shot is fired, is an autonomous cart (Figure 1). This cart is driven inside the bore (Figure 2) and it uses one stepper motor to power two rear wheels and a camera that snaps a picture of a laser illuminated contour of the inside of the bore (2). Due to the fact that the cart is driving using 4 wheel on each corner, it fails to fully map the inside of the bore due to obstructions, mainly the corner edge sludge.

Figure 1. GA design approach                                                                                                                                       Figure 2. Cart inside the bore

   Figure 3. Back view of the cart inside the bore                    Figure 4. Laser image of the bore captured by the camera