A survey of composite robot for aviation intelligent manufacturing application

With the rapid development of the aviation industry, the development of intelligent manufacturing equipment represented by composite robots has been paid close attention by the aviation industry. Based on the analysis of the background and main structure function of composite robots, this paper focuses on the analysis of key technologies such as composite robot hardware design, visual sensing and planning system, integrated control of ‘hands, feet, and eyes’, multi-robot collaborative operation, and safety. The typical applications of composite robots in aviation intelligent manufacturing such as automatic drilling and connection of aircraft, aircraft surface spraying and finishing, parts handling, aircraft measurement, and inspection are presented. The development trends such as standardization of composite robots, integration of ‘5G + cloud computing + AI’, and fusion of intelligent sensors are proposed.