A Transformable Manufacturing Concept for Low-Volume Aerospace Assembly

Abstract

This paper presents a vision for a transformable manufacturing system based on reconfigurable and adaptive intelligent technologies, anchored in the description of a real automation cell demonstrating the assembly of various aircraft structures. This production environment developed by the University of Nottingham is a new reconfigurable production environment for the complete manufacturing of high-accuracy high-complexity low-volume aerospace products. This agile reconfigurable cell can accommodate multiple product variants and families which ensures that the capital invested in fixturing is not tied to one application. By compressing the assembly of an aircraft wing structure into a single automated cell, the Future Automated Aircraft Assembly Demonstrator features a flexible, holistic, and context-aware solution that includes automated positioning, drilling, and fastening processes. The assembly cell is based on industrial robots for the handling of aircraft components while an intelligent metrology and control system monitors the cell and ensures that the operations carried out are safe and adhere to the tight tolerances required. These modules are integrated into a single, standardised interface requiring only one operator to control the cell. Performance analyses have shown that, using the reconfigurable production environment described hereafter, an assembly part location accuracy better than ±0.1 mm can be achieved.