Industrial IoT system to support the assembly of large components

Abstract:
Smart and networked sensors are conquering industrial applications in addition to the consumer sector. While the costs for manufacturing and the required installation space are constantly decreasing, the functional performance of these technologies is growing. In the industrial environment, they are used to acquire measurement data, digitize processes, enrich digital twins with information, and reveal cause-and-effect relationships. Companies have recognized the opportunities offered by this digital transformation and smart manufacturing. The paper starts at this point and explains how IoT technologies and precision measurement tools can be combined to support handling of large components in manufacturing. It describes a developed sensor gateway and its possibilities to optimize the complex joining process of two fuselage sections in final aircraft assembly. A high number of previously complex and time-consuming manual measurement steps will no longer be necessary in the future with the use of this smart and networked sensor technology. We address the developed sensor tools, describe how the data are collected in the process, and we support the assembly via a kinematics model. An evaluation on the developed technology demonstrator underpins the results with realistic measurement data.