Lightweight robotics for aeronautic aircraft assembly

ORGANISATION PROFILE Airbus Commercial Aircraft, headquartered in Toulouse, is owned by the Airbus Group, a global leader in aerospace, defense and related services with a presence on every continent. Airbus produces a modern and comprehensive aircraft family, complemented by the highest standard of product support. Manufacturing operations around the world set industry benchmarks in quality and efficiency. Key to achieving this is Airbus' workforce who draws on a pioneering spirit which has made Airbus a worldwide leader, resulting in a 2017 turnover around 51 billion euros. Within this activity, the main contributor from Airbus Commercial Aircraft will be the Manufacturing Engineering Division of Getafe Factory (Spain). This activity is linked to the on-going programme ‘Light Automation’ launched in 2018 and to previous R&T “Future of Aircraft Factory" initiative launched in 2013. These ongoing projects aim to identify emerging labs technologies and help them mature so as to improve the competitivity of the aircraft assembly/equipping systems in Airbus' plants. Target applications are divided into several categories in aerospace industrial context mainly based on Major Component Assembly or Final Assembly Line plants. Extending automation requires a special approach to support a wide variety of tasks, environments and process layouts. Humans and machines need to fully collaborate in the physical environment and process execution in highly constrained situations (jigs and assembly lines).

PROPOSAL INTRODUCTION (I) Vision: Adaptation and integration of collaborative robots into assembly tasks. Motivation: Airbus is one of the most successful industries in Europe. Yet, their industrial assembly process involves a majority of manual tasks. There is a clear need for automation in Airbus assembly lines, in order to increase production capabilities, release the human operators from painful and dangerous tasks and to anticipate the progress of competitors (in the USA and Asia). However, the scale of the assembly setup is uncommonly large and the typical automation solutions used in other industries do not easily transfer to aircraft assembly tasks. An appealing solution is to instead use mobile manipulators of a smaller size. By being mobile, they could access all of the assembly line. By being small in size and lightweight, they could operate without additional civil engineering and without preventing concurrent access of human operators. The robots must be able to control their balance and the forces they exert when tooling, localize in the assembly environment, detect obstacles and neighbor workers, quickly react in case of failure and operate close to humans. The range of tasks to be achieved requires mostly mobile manipulators on wheels able to operate on flat shop floors. Content: The scope of this project covers one or several of the following topics: - Automated screwing using mobile manipulator. - Automated masking (before painting) of aircraft unions. - Autonomous 3D scanning of aircraft pieces. - Other works such as sealing, fastening and/or positioning of large pieces.

PROPOSAL INTRODUCTION (II) Expected outcome: End-effector HW development Specialized software middleware for aeronautic assembly tasks Definition of methodologies for collaborative human-robot works Impacts: -- New automated processes replacing human manual works. - New robotics manipulators able to work in similar manufacturing companies. Schedule: 2019-2021. Duration: 12-24 months

PARTNERS Current Consortium: AIRBUS, Robotnik, CT Ingenieros Partner search: SME and start-up companies willing to adapt collaborative robotic arms to aeronautical manufacturing activities. Automotion end-users with similar needs.

CONTACT INFO Contact info: Alberto Nuñez Velazquez alberto.nunez@airbus.com +34 917564486

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