Robotic simple and fast drilling system for automated aircraft assembly

Narrow space characteristic is a common structural feature of aircraft assembly, which puts forward higher requirements for the end-effector of a robot drilling system. This paper proposed a new robotic simple and fast drilling system for aircraft automatic assembly. The robot drilling system and control scheme are designed. The end-effector is designed and calculated theoretically. The workflow of the whole system is designed and analyzed. Besides, a new calibration method is proposed for the system calibration includes the calibration of the robot end-effector and the calibration of the robot system relative to the machined parts. Finally, some drilling experiments are designed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system. The results show that the newly designed robotic drilling system can meet the requirements of aircraft part drilling, such as the drilling accuracy is better than 0.5 mm, the drilling process is more stable, and the rigidity of the system is better. The drilling error of the hole diameter of this system can be controlled below 0.1 mm. The relative distances between holes in the X and Y direction and the hole edge distance meet the technical requirements, and all errors can be controlled to less than 0.5 mm, respectively.