A robot assisted assembly system for small components in aircraft assembly

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a robot-assisted assembly system (RAAS) for the installation of a variety of small components in the aircraft assembly system. The RAAS is designed to improve the assembly accuracy and increase the productive efficiency. Design/methodology/approach – The RAAS is a closed-loop feedback system, which is integrated with a laser tracking system and an industrial robot system. The laser tracking system is used to evaluate the deviations of the position and orientation of the small component and the industrial robot system is used to locate and re-align the small component according to the deviations. Findings – The RAAS has exhibited considerable accuracy improvement and acceptable assembly efficiency in aircraft assembly project. With the RAAS, the maximum position deviation of the component is reduced to 0.069 mm and the maximum orientation deviation is reduced to 0.013°. Social implications – The RAAS is applied successfully in one of the aircraft final assembly projects in southwest China. Originality/value – By integrating the laser tracking system, the RAAS is constructed as a closed-loop feedback system of both the position and orientation of the component. With the RAAS, the installation a variety of small components can be dealt with by a single industrial robot.

A robotic boring system for intersection holes in aircraft assembly

“…It can be seen that, in the method above, the position error and orientation deviation are calculated and compensated directly. It is different from the method introduced in a previous study (Jin et al , 2014) where two point sets are fitted to get the pose error indirectly. In addition, different from the method in a previous study (Jin et al , 2014), there are no reference points to be calibrated in the method above, resulting that the time to complete the compensation work is much less.…”

“…Lots of methods have been put forward to solve the problem. In a robot-aided aircraft assembly system, Jin et al (2014) constructed a closed-loop feedback system with the laser tracker to compensate the robot positioning error. To improve the robotic drilling accuracy in aerospace manufacturing, Zhu et al (2013) proposed a position correction method based on the measurement data of reference holes in reference and further introduced an accuracy compensation method based on a 2D vision system in reference (Zhu et al , 2014).…”

A Vision-Based Path Planning and Object Tracking Framework for 6-DOF Robotic Manipulator

“…In another research, robot-assisted assembly system for installation was proposed for a variety of small components in the aircraft assembly. This system was designed and proposed to improve accuracy in the assembly process and increase the production efficiency with minimal defects on the aircraft assembly line [8]. For remote robotics, manipulators constituted with flexible camera platforms are suggested for pan-tilt units.…”

Online pose correction of an industrial robot using an optical coordinate measure machine system

“…17 Also, Jin et al proposed a robot-assisted assembly system to improve the accuracy in the process of installing small components. 18 In this system, a laser tracker was integrated with a KUKA KR360L280-2 robot in a closed-loop system, and the maximum position error was reduced from 1:379 mm to 0:069 mm, after two or three correction iterations. However, this robot was calibrated by the manufacturer before the experiment.…”