Vibration-Reducing End Effector for Automation of Drilling Tasks in Aircraft Manufacturing

Abstract

In this letter, we present an end effector that can drill holes compliant to aeronautic standards while mounted on a lightweight robot arm. There is an unmet demand for a robotic solution capable of drilling inside an aircraft fuselage, as size, weight, and space constraints disqualify current commercial solutions for this task. Our main contribution is the mechanical design of the end effector with high-friction, vibration-reducing feet that are pressed against the workpiece during the drilling process to increase stability, and a separate linear actuator to advance the drill. This relieves the robot arm of the task of advancing and stabilizing the drill, and leaves it with the task of positioning and holding the end effector. The stabilizing properties of the end effector are confirmed experimentally. The solution took first place at the Airbus Shopfloor Challenge, an international robotics competition held at ICRA 2016 that modeled the in-fuselage drilling task.