Assembly cell concept for human and robot in cooperation

Abstract

Today’s aerospace assembly is a huge manual task according to strictly controlled instructions, where differentoperators are responsible for different areas. This harmonizes with the overall lean approach, but the assemblyis very time-consuming and some tasks are not ergonomically friendly, such as assembly tasks inside a wingbox. Here, it could be possible to increase automation with the aim to facilitate a shorter assembly time andergonomically improved workplace. This paper will present different assembly cell concepts utilizing differentsafety strategies to achieve human-robot cooperation in an aerospace industry assembly line. These conceptswill be discussed in relation to a case in the aerospace industry. The paper concludes with suggestions forthree conceptual human-robot cooperation layouts. These are based on previous research in the areas ofsafety and human-robot cooperation, in combination with observations from an aerospace assembly line.