Roadmap to automated assembly

XYREC Leads the Way

Current manufacturing uses dedicated automated solutions for assembling large vehicles, such as aircraft. The investment cases for these solutions can be difficult to make, as development of dedicated machines for a single task does not guarantee high utilization, and upfront development costs and risks are high.

XYREC’s robotic architecture overcomes these concerns, by being employable in a broad spectrum of scenarios. The beam, which is up to 15 meters long, can support an application tool of 600 kg and is able to reach deep inside aircraft. When used as an automatic guided vehicle, the omnidirectional base can handle up to 55 tons of weight, to transport aircraft parts, for example. The open software architecture facilitates integration with manufacturing planning solutions and current tooling.

To the Future

Together with Aerospace OEM’s we structurally rethink the assembly process of aircraft, using flexible, large and powerful robots that optimize building steps and logistics. Key in our analysis, is the recognition that aircraft are very particular shaped machines for which car-industry robots, that can only reach up to three meters, are no solution. The flexibility of our robot design combined with the use of metrological data, offers the potential for full automation and it drastically increases the possible applications of the robots. They are large and powerful enough to carry heavy end-effectors and perform tasks such as lifting, providing force, drilling or using other mechanical tools, even in parallel, while covering the whole aircraft.