Human-robot collaborative assembly of movable airfoils using adaptive admittance control

Abstract

Purpose – With the increasing requirements for intelligence in the field of aviation manufacturing, manual assembly can hardly adapt to the trend of future production. The purpose of this study is to realize the semi-automatic assembly of the movable airfoil by proposing a human-robot collaborative assembly strategy based on adaptive admittance control. Design/methodology/approach – A logical judgment system for operating intentions is introduced in terms of different situations of the movements; hence, a human cognition-based adaptive admittance control method is developed to curb the damage of inertia; then virtual limit walls are raised on the periphery of the control model to ensure safety; finally, simulated and experimental comparisons with other admittance control methods are conducted to validate the proposed method. Findings – The proposed method can save at least 28.8% of the time in the stopping phase which effectively compensates for inertia during the assembly process and has high robustness concerning data disturbances. Originality/value – Due to the human-robot collaboration to achieve compliant assembly of movable airfoils can preserve human subjectivity while overcoming the physical limits of humans, which is of great significance to the investigation of intelligent aircraft assembly, the proposed method that reflects the user's naturalness and intuitiveness can not only enhance the stability and the flexibility of the manipulation, but also contribute to applications of industrial robots in the field of human-robot collaboration.

Keywords

• Adaptive admittance control
• Human-robot collaboration
• Aircraft assembly
• Industrial robotics
• User-friendliness