Automotive robots brought to aerospace tolerances

Mark Summers, engineering group leader, Automation and Robotics, Airbus UK, says: “Company-wide, we drill around 50 million holes per year and half of these are manually processed. Our research is part of a drive to significantly reduce manual processing across current and future aircraft programmes. “Standard industrial robots are not accurate enough for our process specifications, as absolute positional accuracy of ±0.2mm is required in many applications. Our team has brought together two developmental partners, Kuka UK and M3, to address this problem, and we believe we have come up with a winning solution which could bring a low cost, flexible robotic platform into the aerospace sector.” M3 is a Metris metrology integrator, and a Dassault Systemes Delmia UK service partner. The new Airbus process links a Metris system to the kuka robot dynamically, on-line. All of the robot programmes being created off-line use the Delmia V5 robotics simulation software. This is not the first time Kuka and Delmia have worked together. Under the aegis of Daimler-Chrysler, experts from the two companies created a second-generation solution of ‘Realistic Robot Simulation’ (RRS2), a graphical environment provided by Delmia, into which Kuka connects real-time information on the movements of its own virtual robotic manipulator (VRC), to achieve a higher level of simulation prove-out and integration into real robots. The Airbus project takes advantage of this solution, with the final full syntax programmes being run on the Kuka VRC, which graphically drives the Delmia simulation, enabling accurate cycle times and clash detection. Says Roger Holden, managing director of M3, the company with joint commercial rights to this system: “All parties agreed that because the part programmes are so large, and the accuracy requirements so high, an Off-Line Programming Kuka’s VRC provide an excellent solution. “Linking this with our metrology interface and integration means the robot is consistently running programmes, accurately, referenced back to the CAD master dynamically on-site. The system is currently being commissioned. It is built, operational and about to be put into action at Airbus, Filton, UK.”