COVER STORY JULY/AUGUST 2019
Reach for the skies: Airbus turns to AGVs
to transport aircraft wings around its site
The vast Airbus factory in Broughton, North Wales, is no stranger to technology.
MM’s October 2018 issue, for instance, profi led the work the company has done
with Cranfi eld University into collaborative robotics (https://bit.ly/2XwbDoe).
Now, in partnership with the Integrated Manufacturing Group at the Advanced
Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) in She eld, it has gone one stage further
by exploring a way of autonomously transporting parts – potentially including
entire wing assemblies – around the factory.
The project began by developing a safe, automated means of delivering tools
and materials. However, once the advantages of doing so became clear, it was
quickly scaled up. The processes being replaced traditionally involve a signifi cant
amount of intricate manual work, transporting large and delicate aircraft parts
around the shopfl oor.
The technology was developed by the AMRC based on the MiR200 robot from
Danish company, Mobile Industrial Robots ApS. They currently have a payload of
200kg and top speed of around 2.5mph. A team of engineers has been adapting
them to safely transport small items such as drilling tools in a storage rack designed
and validated using augmented reality technologies at the AMRC’s Factory 2050.
In-built laser scanners map the environment, allowing the robots to navigate
their surroundings unaided by human intervention; whilst fl ashing lamps and
beacons indicate current status and intended direction to those in the vicinity.
“This project has been Airbus’ fi rst trial of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) on
the shopfl oor,” says Amer Liaqat, technology manager for assembly innovation and
development at Airbus. “We have made a number of enhancements to the standard
o -the-shelf technology to make it safe and suitable for our factory environment
and are now setting benchmark for its roll-out to other Airbus sites worldwide.”
The potential benefi ts of the technology are massive, adds Dr Lloyd Tinkler, a
senior project engineer at the AMRC. “Supervised trials of the robots have already
taken place and estimated that using them could save the
whole time equivalent of one operator per shift in the
current use case at Airbus, freeing time for the operators
to work on highly skilled tasks, ultimately improving
shopfl oor productivity. Further developments to the
technology will enable us to complete a trial of the AMRs
unsupervised by humans at the Airbus site, the aim of
which is to validate the estimated time-savings, the
number of movements and how many tools the robots
are delivering between the engineers per shift.”
Steve Wilkins, UK managing director of
Brose goes further: “An AGV will always be in
work on time and won’t call in sick; we never
have to pay it overtime. Also, people can’t mess
around with the AGVs – they can’t be taken
outside when they’re not supposed to be, which
means our maintenance costs are lower.”
Upgraded, not replaced
All of this, inevitably, means human workers
could be forgiven for looking nervously over
their shoulders at the seemingly unstoppable
tide of technological process. As with shopfl oor
automation, it isn’t a giant leap to the idea that
a warehouse that can run itself will have no
place for humans. However, a recent survey of
global warehousing industry leaders by Zebra
Technologies found that just 16% of respondents
said that full automation, with no human
involvement, is the optimal solution for their
operations. In addition, though, just 11% said that
they would be pursuing a path of no automation,
with the vast majority aiming to incorporate some
level of automation in the next fi ve years.
Striking a balance between technology
and humans is the sensible approach, says
Wincanton’s Keilty: “One of the key challenges
with automation is the (perceived) impact on
people. Our view is that by bringing automation
into the warehouse we are upgrading work,
not replacing people. We are introducing
opportunities for our operatives to become
engineers, planners, technologists and bring
out talents and skills that cannot be replicated
in the same way by machines.”
This is the case at Brose, as well. At the factory,
the AGVs operate on a ‘closed-loop’ system within
the site. They move between the four assembly
lines and the packaging area, delivering empty
packaging to the lines and returning packaged
product to be dispatched. “We had been suff ering
some organisational downtime caused by
packaging either not arriving or not being taken
away on time because people got caught up doing
other things,” explains Wilkins. “Automation
allows us to eliminate that downtime. Anyone
whose job has been ‘replaced’ by the AGVs has
been redeployed in the company, which has
allowed us to take on additional business without
having to hire new staff .”
And then, the clincher: “Nobody in the factory
or the warehouse has lost their job because of the
new technology.”
The technology available
As warehouse automation becomes more
mainstream, so too the technology becomes
more accessible. While something like wearable
technology (see box, p20) is still largely in its
infancy, at least in an industrial setting, robots
are fast becoming valuable members of the
warehouse team.
They are becoming increasingly intelligent
and sophisticated, as well. Innovation specialist
Cambridge Consultants has developed Hank, a
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