Assembly cell concept for human and robot in cooperation

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