Abstract—In the aerospace industry, maintenance protocols are in place to ensure the safety of personnel and the integrity of aircraft. Air intakes are difficult to access, making it challenging to clean them and perform Foreign Object Debris (FOD) extraction. This paper presents a technical-economic analysis of robotic handling technologies, aimed at identifying the most suitable technology for cleaning and FOD removal operations in fighter aircraft air intakes. First, a research team from the Universidad Nacional de San Agustin de Arequipa (UNSA) in collaboration with maintenance personnel from the Fuerza Aerea del Peru (FAP), conducted a review of recent technologies in manipulation robotics focused on cleaning and removing FOD from fighter aircraft air intakes, classifying them into 12 types of manipulators according to the end effector, to rate their performance in FOD cleaning and/or extraction activities, while also meeting the needs of FAP personnel. Nine indicators aligned with the requirements were determined, each manipulation technology was rated, and these values were operated with relevance factors calculated for each indicator by the Mudge diagram. Micro-gripper handling technology obtained the highest score for both technical analysis and technical-economic analysis, with weights of 25.7 and 30.1, respectively. This result makes it the technology best suited for cleaning and FOD extraction in air intakes. These results were based on an assessment by FAP expert staff, and no experimental validations or tests with actual prototypes were performed. The results of this study will be corroborated in future work through advanced simulations and experimental laboratory tests.

Keywords—aircraft, manipulation, robotics, cleaning, extraction, Foreign Object Debris (FOD), air intakes

Cite: Alejandro Canal, Emerson Chambi, Yuri L. Silva, and Erick Valdeiglesias Flores, "Analysis of Robotic Manipulation Technologies Applied to the Cleaning/Extraction of FOD from Fighter Aircraft Air," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 290-302, 2026. doi: 10.18178/ijmerr.15.3.290-302

Copyright © 2026 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).