The University of Nottingham’s Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing (CAM) works closely with the European aerospace industry leaders to deliver translational industrially focused research in future aerospace assembly systems.

The Future Automated Aerospace Assembly Demonstrator (FA3D) platform is the testbed where newly developed innovative and ground-breaking assembly methods and solutions for cost-effective future aerospace manufacture are tested and validated.

The cell combines intelligent fixturing, automation systems, advanced process end effectors, integrated safety systems, spatially-aware RFID tracking, state-of-the-art metrology systems, and integrated informatics to deliver reconfigurable, evolvable cells capable of significant product variation, which are variability aware and which enable batch sizes of one.

The demonstrator platform allowed for aerospace companies to test and validate future information-rich assembly methods for aerostructures, using metrology data integrated with robot controllers to compensate for variability in assembly, and to achieve fixtureless assembly of aerostructures.  

• Any complex manufacturing system generates large amounts of data, and this data is often underutilised and little value is generated. Due to FA3D2’s highly flexible nature, it is an extremely complex system with many sources of variability which require understanding and compensating for.
• The integrated digital twin system of FA3D2 simplifies the gathering and contextualising of data via an OPC UA-based service bus. This data is collected and aggregated in a cloud-based environment for analysis.
• Machine learning approached and other analytical tools are being developed to analyse the data, update virtual twins or test proposed changes in the digital twin, and then deploy these changes to the shop floor via the same digital pipeline as the virtual commissioning process.
• Key to this approach is integrating the skills and knowledge of the workers on the shop floor, who work in conjunction with the AI approaches to achieve hybrid decision making – the combination of human and machine intelligence.

• Virtual commissioning radically reduces the time required to change and recommission a manufacturing system, but the scope of possible change is bounded by the physical morphology of the system. FA3D2 uses a combination of highly flexible technologies to enable a huge possible scope of system reconfiguration.
• Key to this is a module reconfigurable flooring system that allows fixturing, robots, and other manufacturing assets to be quickly moved and accurately located. Services are run under the flooring surface to keep the floor safe and level.
• To compliment assets attached to the flooring system, automated ground vehicles are used for moving robots and metrology devices with even more flexibility, bring them to the locations required, as they are needed.
• Lastly, FA3D2 uses robotics in combination with configurable fixturing systems to minimise or even eliminate the need for static jigs and fixture, allowing batch sizes down to one.
• All these systems are integrated into the digital twin, allowing the manufacturing system to rapidly meet almost any large-scale assembly challenge.

Manufacturing systems need to be increasingly flexible to cope with the demands placed on them – changing product requirements, volumes, and availability of supply all require flexibility to manage.

• Commissioning is the process of designing, purchasing, programming, installing, and testing a manufacturing system. It is a complex and time-consuming process. Reacting to changing manufacturing requirements may require a system to be recommissioning depending on the scope of change, and the time and cost of this contributes to the difficulty of low-batch production.
• Virtual commissioning is a method by which a manufacturing system is designed, programmed, and tested virtually with a sufficiently high degree of accuracy that the design and program code can be deployed to the physical line immediately with only a small amount of extra testing.
• FA3D2 is a highly reconfigurable, flexible system able to produce a wide range of aerospace components, and is designed from the ground up to take advantage of virtual commissioning. This allows for the system to be being prepared for the next product or challenge while still producing the current product, reducing the downtime to completely change the system from months to days.
• This is achieved with tightly integrated high-fidelity simulation approach, control emulators, and a management process for the deployment of virtually tested code.