Nowadays, robust and light-weight parts used in the automobile and aeronautics industry are made of carbon fibres. To increase the mechanical toughness of the parts the carbon fibres are stitched in the preforming process using a sewing robot. However, current systems miss high flexibility and rely on manual programming of each part. The main target of this work is to develop an automatic system that autonomously sets the structure strengthening seams. Therefore, a rapid and flexible following of the carbon textile edges is required. Due to the black and reflective carbon fibres a laser-stripe sensor is necessary and the processing of the range data is a challenging task. The paper proposes a real time approach where different edge detection methodologies are combined in a voting scheme to increase the edge tracking robustness. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of a fully automated, sensorguided robotic sewing process. The seam can be located to within 0.65mm at a detection rate of 99.3% for individual scans.

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Modern materials research in the field of aeronautics seeks new methods to improve the performance of combustion engines and turbines by reducing weight using materials with high specific strength and stiffness. [1] Since the growth of international air traffic is about 5 % per year and the market demands economical turbines the need of lightweight materials becomes clear. [2] One way to achieve this objective is to use metal matrix composites (MMC). Most promising is the combination of SiC fibers together with TiAl6V4 (Ti-MMC). As Titanium 6±4 can be easily diffusion bonded, one fabrication route is the hot isostatic pressing (HIP) of Ti-coated SiC fibers.A feasibility study has been carried out by MTU Aero Engines, which proofed a possible weight reduction by 25 % using Ti-MMC.Most recently the successful application of this composite material as a landing gear component has been reported in literature. [3] The aim of this combination is to take advantage of the high Young's modulus of the SiC fibers and the low weight of Titanium (high specific stiffness). The SiC fibers, which are

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