Smart Inspection Tools in robotized aircraft panels manufacturing

This paper presents the Smart Inspection Tools developed for the robotic cell designed for fuselage panels manufacturing, in the LABOR project. This project has the objective to develop a small size, low-cost automatic cell for the drilling, fastening, sealing and inspection of fuselage panels for regional aircraft. This paper focuses on the development of the two Smart Inspection Tools used for referencing the robot with respect to the panel geometry and to check the quality of the manufactured holes. Different inspection technologies have been exploited to guarantee the strict project specifications. The paper presents the design of the developed tool and shows the experimental results of a prototypal versions.