© 2024 IEEE.This article presents the virtual commissioning of a multi-user cyber-physical laboratory for remote access (Multicyber) integrated with Industry 4.0 technologies to promote neoindustrialization. The project incorporates Digital Twins, Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Industrial Robotics, Vision Systems, Autonomous and Collaborative Robots, Cybersecurity, and the Industrial Internet of Things. The objective of the Multicyber project is to create a demonstration center focused on advancing applied research in manufacturing processes. The laboratory features a manufacturing cell with an Autonomous Mobile Robot (AMR), a collaborative anthropomorphic manipulator (cobot), quality inspection via computer vision, a five-axis machine, and a robotic arm for machining. This study presents the simulation of three complete manufacturing routines. Plant Simulation software was used to obtain travel times for the AMR, inspection, and part removal stages, while NX software was used for detailed machining simulations with precision adjustments. The results highlight the benefits of using robotic arms in manufacturing and demonstrate how AMRs and cobots can add value through the planning and integration of routines.

© 2024 IEEE.This paper explores the integration of virtual reality (VR) with teleoperation systems to enhance human-robot interaction. With the rise of remote operations, traditional methods often rely on two-dimensional interfaces, making it challenging to control robots in complex three-dimensional environments. This research presents a VR teleoperation system using the Meta Quest 2 headset, enabling immersive control of a climbing robot with six degrees-of-freedom and magnetic adhesion. The system architecture integrates Unity for virtual simulation and the Robot Operating System (ROS) for real-time communication and control. A virtual environment allows the user to control the virtual robot model through the VR headset and controllers, with ROS serving as the communication bridge between the virtual and physical robots, enabling effective operations in various applications, including high-risk environments (A video is available at https://youtu.be/MiZDOV4IfLA).

© 2023 Euspen Headquarters.Tool and mould making is one of the most important sectors of industrial manufacturing. Currently, over a third of polymer products are manufactured by injection moulding or stamping. These processes are complex, as the melted or heated polymers are subject to thermomechanical changes. Since injection moulding and stamping are mostly used for mass production, process repeatability and quality of the final product are very important. Improper adjustments of process variables lead to various defects in the final product along with high amount of waste and rejects. The need for measurement and control of the process is mandatory. Frequently, the tool is not operated by the owner of the mold or the end user of the plastic components, respectively, but by an injection molding service provider within the supply chain. Consequently, it is impossible for the tool owner to trace the quality of parts regarding the parameters applied for processing. This is crucial information to connect parts outside the tolerances to the respective process characteristics. The increase of quality in the production is achievable through correlating the processing parameters applied with the produced components. Therefore, the aim of the research herein is to develop an autonomous sensor system for monitoring injection moulding and stamping processes. The system comprises an external component of the tool in order to record and document the parameters applied such as tool temperature, pressure, number of machined parts and geolocation among others. In conjunction with a connected laser marking system for injection moulding, the unique identification of the components and the unchangeable connection of the production parameters with an individual component is enabled. The direct technological added value is given by the fact that the customer is able to monitor the production at any time, any place, comparing the actual production with the agreed and specified conditions. Furthermore, this information enables the creation of new business models for the tool owner. Even though this work is at initial stages, the preliminary results detailed herein are rather encouraging.

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.The aeronautic manufacturing industry has been seeking to enhance competitiveness and product quality by applying the Industry 4.0’s technologies. Particularly, on the roadmap of the digital twin era, a way to achieve a reduction in manufacturing time and thus production cost is to obtain prediction models of the main elementary assembly operations and functions within aircraft manufacturing process, such as the clamping force applied by the temporary fasteners on the aircraft’s structural parts. Besides being a mandatory operation, it affects multiple tasks along the product’s assembly lifecycle. This work focuses on the role of the clamping force in the assembly process, establishing its functional model by means of an experimental approach based upon resources used on a real shop floor of a major aircraft manufacturer. To evince the main requirements that the clamping force tools can achieve, this work employs the Taguchi Design method, design of experiments, and process capability analysis. The model resulted from the aforementioned methods and tools allows the assembly behavior prediction and thus the control of the manufacturing process, ultimately yielding a better geometry quality.

© This work deals with the elastostatic identification of industrial manipulators. By reviewing the basics of the physical elastic properties of both links and joints in the framework of the lumped stiffness modeling techniques, the Gramian nature of the stiffness matrices has been found out adequate to do so. Then, a novel optimization method has been developed, which incorporates the Gramian matrix formulation along a non-linear optimization process, acting as an intrinsic constraint for the conservativeness of the elastostatic modeling. Numerical and experimental analyses evince the effectiveness of the proposed method, as the elastostatic models obtained by means of the proposed technique predict more than 93.7% of the compliance deviations of a real industrial robot. The proposed method is simple enough to be jointly applicable to the most recent elastostatic model reduction techniques.

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.Riveting processes are widely used in aeronautical structures, mainly in thin shell structures, like wing and fuselage panels. During such processes, the product shape is slightly changed. That slight geometrical change can be detected by measurement systems or even visually in some cases. The riveting-induced shape alterations, may affect, in some amount, the aerodynamics and the manufacturing cycle and cost of the final product. One cause of the deformations, among many others, is the cumulative effect of the diametral expansions, along the riveting lines. Aerodynamic surfaces, under such phenomenon, may be sensibly affected. The consequences are not deeply addressed in the current literature. The shape problem is not considered in the design of the riveting systems either, and the problem may be intensified by automatic or robotized riveting systems once those are set to accomplish an optimized cycle time, but no consideration is given regarding to the minimization of the possible shape distortion. Such effect may become a limitation when developing manufacturing systems for high performance wings in the aeronautical industry. In this work, one selected typical 2D airfoil section is assessed for shape deviations at the relative proportions normally induced by riveting processes. Due to the problem complexity and to simplify this assessment, the simulations herein are limited to 2D flow (no 3D effects addressed). The modified airfoils are numerically evaluated in a 2D flow software code, using the panels’ method, and the results are compared with the original airfoil coefficients (Cl, Cd, Cl/Cd). The objective of this work is to understand the overall effects produced by the shape deviations, their main contributors and the relevance to the conception of new automatic riveting systems aiming wing structural assemblies.

© 2021 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.The riveting process is widely used by the aeronautical industry, mainly in joining sheet metal aluminum alloys. In this process, squeezing force is one of the main setup parameters used to control the quality of the joining process, mainly on automated riveting machines. That squeezing force can be estimated or checked based on the rivet material parameters (hardening constants) and on the driven rivet head dimensions before and after the force application. The equation, commonly used in literature, tends to underestimate, by a relatively small amount, the squeezing force at high squeezing ratios and slightly overestimate at median ratios. This is due to the influence of the following two factors not considered in the original equation: Riveted grip thickness and friction among rivet, sheet, and punch tools. In this work, a revised algebraic model is proposed. The new model is still simple and easily adaptable to a spreadsheet or to a computer code like MATLAB®, R®, Scilab®, or Python®. Using the proposed model, the calculated squeeze force values tend to be more accurate at the squeeze ratios normally used by the aeronautical industry.

© 2020, Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature.The aerospace industry is searching to enhance product quality and performance with lower process cost and investments. One way to achieve that is to maximize automation with less operational resources and machine downtime toward to a friendly product and process assembly. Conventional jigs have rigid frame as main structure and workpieces are loaded by accurate holders, rendering it static. Within this domain, this paper identifies and compares state of art jigs used on automated cells with those of novel jig that meets the operational needs of ordinary aircraft assembly in a disruptive way. This paper details the novel jig as well as the manufacturing benefits using the jigless assembly concept in a drilling robotic working cell. The gains yielded such as infrastructure required, solution cost, performance, and product accessibility are qualitatively demonstrated herein. Additionally, the jigless assembly concept connects the manufacturing demand with the product development environment, based upon Lean manufacturing concepts.

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.A well defined manufacturing company focuses on lean practices along the whole product development process, not exclusively during the manufacturing and production phases. This study focuses on the application steps to be adopted for productivity improvement trough lean methods assessments in a product development company for the aeronautical industry. It also aims to provide insights for decision makers along the whole lean transformation patch, and to reduce the waste generation by eliminating the non-value-added activities resulted by a bad execution of the lean implementation tools and methods. By deploying the proposed study, the assessed enterprise increased its overall lean engagement level and production outputs.

© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.Today manufacturing sectors are more competitive than before. Thus, to execute an enterprise's transformation in a company emerging as a lean organization it is crucial to have assessments and performance measurements that observe multiple variables during the lean implementation patch. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate a research method focused on lean performance measurement assessments from previous works, summarizing and organizing the existing evaluation standards in a way to allow different industrial segments to replicate the screening steps for a literature review construction. As a result, the existing lean performance measurements and methods from the last 23 years were refined in order to highlight opportunities and insights for future researches to be developed on the lean field.

© The Author(s) 2019.The problem this work aims to solve is the improvement of the leanness level of a company jeopardized by the lack of lean engagement. The objectives of the research are to present a method based on a lean self-assessment approach, consisted of a qualitative self-assessment method based on lean elements that drives an index definition associated with a roadmap. The method consists in providing a roadmap for the assessed enterprise composed by the company’s lean index, recommendations and countermeasures deriving from Delphi and Kendall Coefficient of Concordance (W) application among lean experts, leading the assessed enterprise to achieve results in terms of lean engagement, autonomy, and decision support criteria for future resource allocation. The results demonstrated that method can highlight gaps where additional improvements and investments would be necessary in the assessed enterprise. Finally, the study concludes that the lean performance identification associated to a lean roadmap in a company can be a highly effective tool to improve lean adoption in a leanness organization.

© Royal Aeronautical Society 2019.The ever-growing need to improve manufacturing processes has led recently to an increase in the number of automation solutions used to assemble aircraft structural elements. A process of interest to this industry is the alignment of fuselage sections, which is currently done either manually or by complex, expensive automated systems. The manual method introduces a significant production delay and most automated systems have limited flexibility. This article presents an integration solution implemented in an alternative low-cost, high-flexibility alignment robotic cell. The performance of an optical coordinate measuring machine (CMM) as feedback source for the adaptive control of a conventional industrial manipulator is assessed. Laser interferometry readings are used as reference. The contribution of the work lies in the execution of experiments based on the EN ISO 9283 standard (Manipulating industrial robots - performance criteria and related test methods) to determine the adequacy of the commercial off-the-shelf system to the tolerances and requirements of the fuselage alignment process at hand. The optimal configuration of the integrated system attained the nominal alignment position with an average accuracy of 0.16mm and 0.004◦, partially meeting the required tolerances, and the obtained values are nearly 16x better compared to a baseline, open-loop manipulator. These results serve as reference for the aerospace industry in the development of the next generation of tools and automated assembly processes.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019. All rights reserved.Brazil as an emerging country needs to catch up with technology to extend its position on the international market, especially in the space sector. The Technology Nationalization Framework (TNF) is a strategy for nationalization and industrialization of high technology products. The TNF is meant to assure that strategic technologies, that are currently lacking, will be designed, produced, and operated in Brazil as long as needed, without the risk of export bans or unavailability of components. The framework is based on reengineering with subsequent transfer to the national industry. The strategy starts with the identification of strategic technologies in relation to technologies already present in Brazil. For the nationalization process of these technologies a decision-making process is needed taking into account available resources and competencies. In this chapter the TNF will be introduced and explained, while also a pilot project is described in which the TNF strategy is applied.

© 2019, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.Worldwide air traffic has been increasing through the last years, and recent researches indicate that the demand for new aircraft will continue to rise over next few decades. Even today, aeronautical manufacturing involves a large proportion of manual labour which directly affects the production capacity of the industry. Thus, in order to meet the market demand and reach the dynamism that the industry must have to compensate the changes that are driven by customers, the automation of the production lines has become increasingly necessary to guarantee the competitiveness of the aircraft manufacturing companies. On this context, this work presents the development of a Design for Automation designing tool—DFAut—that aims at clarifying the automation requirements of a product at the conceptual design phase. Through this study, it has been verified that the use of the DFAut method has yielded automation requirements that were not feasible to be accomplished by a competitive product to the market. However, within the Integrated Product Design concept, the DFAut results could be adjusted to render the product automation configuration feasible. The DFAut tool has been successfully applied to the design of a wing box, and the results are fully discussed herein.

© 2019, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.This work aims at presenting an integrated development system to a motion real-time flight simulator using a robotic device. This flight simulator is called SIVOR (Simulador de Voo Robótico – Robotic Flight Simulator). This is a multidisciplinary project since it involves different systems with different level of complexity, which by itself give some challenges in how to develop this type of flight simulator. In order to have a flight simulator with base motion upon robotic device it is necessary the domain of systems like robotic, pilot modeling, filtering design, here called by washout filter, aeronautic modeling which includes traditional systems as automatic flight control, aerodynamic, propulsion, ground handling, sensors and actuation. Therefore a considerable effort in the development is demanded to have a representative aircraft model been executed in a real-time flight simulator with robotic motion. Thus this paper presents an integrated modeling process to represents all of the system in order to give a more maturity development cycle, in order to reduce the uncertainties presented in the begin of any project and that becomes more challenging for any complex system. The real-time motion flight simulator based upon robotic environment has a nonlinear flight mechanic model of EMBRAER 190-E2, and here won’t be presented in order to protect the intellectual property and compliance policies of EMBRAER S.A., the other systems will be explained in detail and a sensitive analysis is presented in order to demonstrated that an model based approach shall be used in this kind of flight simulator in order to speed up the maturity level of the system.

� 2019 by German Aerospace Center (DLR). Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc.The need for an optimized aircraft development cycle imposed by market constraints, associated with airliners demands for more cost-effective and safe operations, has become a challenge for aircraft OEM in face of new aircraft ever-growing complexity. Emergent behaviors during the development phase causing project schedule oscillations and delays in the adequate time to market, associated with accident statistics after entering into service phase (especially those associated with Loss of Control in Flight), force new approaches for the development of new aircraft. Based on this scenario, this manuscript describe the efforts to develop a flight simulation-engineering center based on a robotic motion platform. This promising configuration might contribute to overcome some of the previous problems due to augmented motion platform workspace. However, the limited robot payload capacity and the need for a commercial jet representative cockpit, generate critical design constraints and technological challenges to implement this configuration. This manuscript details the design strategy to build the flight simulator assisted by a robotic motion platform and also analyses possible applications.

© 2019, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.This paper presents the SIVOR project, an anthropomorphic-robotic flight simulator under development at the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA), discussing the contribution of an additional 7th degree of freedom (DOF) provided by a linear unit to improve the pilot perception inside the flight simulator. In this context, starting from a canonical washout filter (CWF) implementation, a model-based comparative evaluation – regarding the pilot sensation – is performed considering (i) models of the robotic system with and without the linear unit, (ii) modified versions of the motion-cue algorithm (MCA), (iii) and perception models of the human vestibular system. Such integrated model is used also as the first verification for a predefined flight mission. The results obtained so far suggest an improvement on the representation of the linear acceleration as a larger workspace is provided, though also highlighting the need for further developments on the MCA structure for a better usage of the near feature.

© 2019, Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management. All rights reserved.This paper presents a detailed analysis about the implementation of a washout filter on the SIVOR (Simulador de Voo Robótico – Robotic Flight Simulator) project. The main objective of this project is to develop, on an anthropomorphic robot, a flight simulator which can be used as an Engineering Development System (EDS) and a pilot training platform, capable of providing feelings the pilot would only have in more intensive maneuvers, such as losses/gains of G in aircraft flight tests. The SIVOR project also has the objective of providing a cost-efficient and flexible tool that can be used during the design phases of aircrafts. One of the demanded features of such simulator is a representative behavior of its motion system, which is achieved by an adequate implementation of the washout filter. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are no works in the literature that present a detailed discussion about the implementation of a classical washout filter in such flight simulator, especially when the translational channel is used to its limits. Experimental results to support the proposed solutions are presented herein.

© 2018, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.This paper describes an application of the virtual commissioning technology applied to the design of a robotized manufacturing cell. Virtual commissioning requires the integration of different technologies, such as PLC (programmable logic controller) programming, device communication with OPC (OLE for process control), off-line robot programming, HIL (hardware-in-the-loop), as well as the design of devices and tools using computer-aided design (CAD) applications. Within this application, the virtual commissioning resource evaluates the operation of an assembly line, simulates several processes in a digital environment, tests real equipment and tools and integrates a system that shares the signals of the sensors and actuators with the simulation environment in the computer. The case study described herein compares a conventional design process of a car floor spot welding station to the design approach using virtual commissioning. The robotic welding cell is controlled by a PLC integrated in a simulation environment that uses two industrial robots created in the Process Simulate Robotics application of Siemens Tecnomatix®.

© 2018, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.This paper presents the development of design to center of gravity (DT_CG) method, a new member of the DFX (design-for-excellence) design methodology. DT_CG constantly updates the position of the center of gravity of a product under development and inputs it as a requirement into the conceptual phase of the product development process. The CG requirement is yet another requirement to be considered and balanced with others such as weight, cost, and assembly within the Integrated Product Development. The DT_CG method has been successfully applied to the design of a robot end-effector constituted of components that execute a number of functions required for manufacturing processes as drilling, welding, or sanding. The DT_CG was essential to find the geometric constraints between the end-effector CG and the robot’s TCP (tool center point). Despite this paper describes a robotic application, the DT_CG design method is presented in a generic way so that it may be used in any product design where the position of the CG has to be taken into account right from the beginning of the design conceptual phase.

© 2017 Elsevier B.V.Currently, neural networks deliver state of the art performance on multiple machine learning tasks, mainly because of their ability to learn features. However, the architecture of the neural network still requires problem-specific tuning and the long training times and hardware requirements remain an issue. In this work, the Multi-Scale Auto-Tuned Extreme Learning Machine (MSATELM) architecture is proposed, which does not require any manual feature crafting or architecture tuning and automatically learns structure and weights using an auto-tuned ELM as building block. It learns a simple model that achieves the required accuracy. The GPU implementation in OpenCL allows handling any number of samples while still delivering portable code and high performance. Results on MNIST, CIFAR-10 and UCI datasets demonstrate that this approach provides competitive results even though no problem-specific tuning is used.

© 31st Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2018. All rights reserved.This paper presents a rationale for structuring a distributed human factors laboratory for future air systems. The distributed herein refers to two aspects: content and geographic. As for content, the laboratory is structured in two levels, namely, individual, and team. As for geographic, the laboratory infrastructure is distributed in three physically separate facilities, namely, Department of Computer and Information Science (IDA) and Department of Management and Engineering (IEI) from Linköping University - Sweden and the Competence Center in Manufacturing from the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA) - Brazil.

© 31st Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2018. All rights reserved.This paper describes the utilization of large amount of data to analyze the performance of pilots under different flight circumstances assessing the influence of human factors like workload and pilot experience. The methodological approach described herein consists of establishing main research questions, defining hypothesis, acquiring and analyzing simulated flight data. Methods include subjective and objective measurements of qualitative and quantitative nature. After declaring the research questions and hypothesis, simulated flights were performed and analyzed. The preliminary results inspired the creation of a roadmap for assessing Human Factors influence on pilot performance based on simulated flights.

© 31st Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2018. All rights reserved.A great amount of aeronautical accidents and incidents in the last decades are associated with human causes, which can be related not only to the human itself, but with the human machine interface associated to a piloting task. This work presents a preliminary experiment that aims at analysing how a set of different tasks increases the workload of the pilot and how pilot's performance is affected by the increasing workload under different flight conditions (normal and abnormal). The experimental procedure considers 3 pilots executing a take-off and stabilization mission, where a group of tasks, based on the MATB-II approach, are systematically presented to the pilot. Variables such as altitude, heading, rate of climb and yaw rate, are measured. The results show that the variables measured near the pilot input command are more affected by the different levels of workload.

© 31st Congress of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences, ICAS 2018. All rights reserved.Embraer was founded in 1969 to accomplish the vision of the Brazilian government to have the capacity of designing and manufacturing airplanes. The company is organized in three business units: Commercial Aviation, Executive Jets and Defense&Security. In order to have recently graduated engineers prepared to tackle its future challenges, Embraer created in 2001 the PEE - Engineering Specialization Program in partnership with ITA - Aeronautics Institute of Technology. In 2016, more than 6,500 candidates applied for 30 positions. Since 2004, PEE is following the principles of CDIO initiative principles in both the selection of young engineer's process and curriculum design philosophy for the graduate program. As a strategy from Engineering and Technology Department of Embraer, the company needs to adapt its selection process and the curriculum for new engineers to fit to current and future challenges. For instance, from 2008 until now, the number of delivered executive jets dropped from 1315 to 700. Trying to avoid commoditization, the company looks for diversification, searching for new business opportunities. Therefore, offering more services is a natural source of new revenues. More than that, to develop a product and its services simultaneously (Product Service System - PSS from the literature) is a company current objective considering, for instance, the new digital era (Big Data, Industry 4.0 and Internet of Things). To understand how to develop a PSS for the executive jets owners is a major challenge. The other is to present suggestions on how to select and prepare the future engineers of Embraer to be able to conceive, design and implement Product Service Systems for the Executive Aviation Market. For that, a study is being conducted to analyze which competencies and profile are required for that challenge. This paper present as results some guidelines for the selection and education of future engineers of the company in the PSS context.

© 2018, Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management. All rights reserved.Initial Maintenance Review Board Report (MRBR) uses in service operation experience as a reference to define maintenance tasks intervals. However, in general, there is no structured data to compare systems performance and provide useful information to the analysts’ decision-making. Even when engineering judgment is based on certification process, structural design, components intrinsic reliability and so on, the analysts responsible for maintenance tasks definitions tend to choose rather conservative proposals. This article presents a method to optimize preventive maintenance tasks intervals and use structured data based on interval optimization process to define maintenance intervals to those of similar systems under development. The method has been applied in an aircraft manufacturing company using current operation database after regulatory authorities’ approval. As a result, it has been feasible to propose to the selected system, a maintenance task interval 100% higher than the one applicable to a similar system under operation.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018.This study is one of a series of studies, researching various aspects that all aim at enhanced simulation based certification aiding for aircraft. An experimental within-group design study was performed with 10 participants (5 male, and 5 female). The results showed a significant difference, F(2,16) = 5.11, p = 0.019, in mental workload between an engine failure condition and an normal condition for eye blink frequency. No effect of speed at the engine failure event on mental workload was found.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018.This paper shows studies for the development of a mathematical model that adequately represents a pilot behavior in the specific task of offset landing, using data-driven modeling techniques. Flight test data was used for the identification procedure. Considerations on the pilot’s cognitive process and mathematical modeling possibilities were discussed to select the most appropriate inputs and outputs for the model. This data was used to identify the model using artificial neural network techniques. The models obtained were validated against the identification data and different data not used in the training process to evaluate the quality of the models. Conclusions include the difficulties of showing the generalization capabilities of those non-linear models and further studies.

© 2017 Elsevier Inc.Image features are widely used for object identification in many situations, including interpretation of data containing natural scenes captured by unmanned aerial vehicles. This paper presents a parallel framework to extract additive features (such as color features and histogram of oriented gradients) using the processing power of GPUs and multicore CPUs to accelerate the algorithms with the OpenCL language. The resulting features are available in device memory and then can be fed into classifiers such as SVM, logistic regression and boosting methods for object recognition. It is possible to extract multiple features with better performance. The GPU accelerated image integral algorithm speeds up computations up to 35x when compared to the single-thread CPU implementation in a test bed hardware. The proposed framework allows real-time extraction of a very large number of image features from full-HD images (better than 30 fps) and makes them available for access in coalesced order by GPU classification algorithms.

© 2017, Springer-Verlag London.Since the introduction of robots in the automotive industry for pick and place tasks, new technologies have been developed in order to adapt robots to different manufacturing processes. Among them, the use of robots as machine tools is a technological trend that demands further investigation. Industrial robots with 6 DOF (degrees of freedom) in a serial kinematic chain have larger workspace and more flexibility, when compared with CNC machines. However, robots’ stiffness is lower than that of CNC machines. Consequently, vibration problems are expected, which can have a direct impact on the quality of the machined workpieces. This work proposes a method to evaluate and customize the use of a COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) robot equipped with a spindle for machining processes. It aims at improving the machining processes based on the measurement of the workpiece waviness and explores the fact that the accuracy and rigidity of industrial robots with serial kinematic chains behave in an anisotropic way, according to the robot pose and the cutting force direction. The method is composed of a set of five experiments and is applied to the evaluation of a robot machining aluminium workpieces. The results allow the identification of the relevant factors that affect the surface quality of the workpiece and recommend the best robot configuration for meeting the waviness requirements of the workpiece. Even though the application case describes the machining of aluminium workpiece, the proposed method is generic enough to be applied to different workpiece geometries and materials.

© 2017, The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.Outdoor optical mark recognition is an extremely useful tool for recognition of large industrial equipment and application of computer vision-based systems for tracking and positioning. However, current algorithms rely on thresholding and corner detection to identify checkerboard-like patterns, which is not appropriate for non-uniform lighting conditions. This paper presents a robust methodology to identify optical markers in outdoor environments. A GPU-based region filling algorithm automatically detects all contiguous color regions without computing seed points. Post-processing steps extract high-level information from these regions. Analysis of identified contiguous color region allows simultaneous identification of all checkerboard and targets (concentric regions) in the scene. Analysis of variance demonstrates that the proposed methodology is robust to lighting, environment, perspective, and occlusion. Tests indicate that precision and recall for checkerboard and target identification in outdoor conditions are expected to be above 97%. The parallel algorithm implementation using OpenCL yields better results and is two times faster than previous region filling algorithms, taking about 0.6 s to process a full-HD picture using modern hardware.

© 2017 IEEE.This work presents the development of a hybrid arm prosthesis controlled by EEG signals. A microcontroller in the prosthesis is responsible to process the signals sent by a headset that reads the electrical activity of the brain. Also presents the mechanical development of the prosthesis, respecting the ergonomic and anthropometric criteria. From this development, the work serves as a basis for improving the quality of life of the people and presents a low cost of production compared to the average price of hybrid prosthesis.

© World Scientific Publishing Co.This paper presents the integrated product development tool Design for Autonomy for reengineering of complex products. The objective is to assure that the product can be designed, produced and operated in Brazil for a defined period of time at a minimum risk of being dependent on export bans or unavailability of components. This tool is a new member of the Design for X family, which aims at integrating the requirements from the autonomy area into the conceptual phase of the product development process. Development guidelines derived from the procedures of the generic Design for X development framework are presented that lead to a balance between functionality and operability. The Design for Autonomy tool contains four steps: (1) Analysis of the product in order to identify critical elements; (2) Preparation of nationalization; (3) Reverse engineering of the original product in order to obtain technological know-how; and (4) Forward engineering for a national product, stimulating improvements and added value. The implementation can be evaluated by qualitative and quantitative performance criteria comparing the national product with the baseline configuration of the original product. The Design for Autonomy tool is being successfully applied and verified on a pilot project in the Brazilian space sector.

© 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.Air Hockey is a sport practiced in a table with low friction. Two players competing against each other holding paddles that are used to hit a puck with the objective of getting scores every time the puck enters the opponent's goal. This paper covers the development of low-cost vision based air hockey system capable of playing a match of Air Hockey against a human player. The system is composed by a robot, a camera and an Arduino MEGA board. The efficiency of the robot is presented in the final experiment, which justifies the possibility of using the system as a training environment for professional players.

© 2017, Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management. All rights reserved.This paper presents an analysis of the scenario of small satellites and its correspondent launch vehicles. The miniaturization of electronics, together with reliability and performance increase as well as reduction of cost, have allowed the use of commercials-off-the-shelf in the space industry, fostering the Smallsat use. An analysis of the launched Smallsats during the last 20 years is accomplished and the main factors for the Smallsat (r)evolution, outlined. Based on historic data, future scenarios for different mass categories of Smallsats are presented. An analysis of current and future launch vehicles reveals that we are currently in a phase of transition, where old launch vehicles get retired and new ones enter the market. However, the satellite launch vehicle business has been established to carry payloads of thousands of kilos into low Earth orbit and has not adjusted itself to the market of Smallsats. As a result, there is only 1 launch vehicle for dedicated Smallsat launches commercially available, but it carries a high price tag. Several small lowcost launch vehicles under development are identified and the challenges to overcome, discussed. Since these small launch vehicles have similar complexity as huge launch vehicles, high development costs are intrinsic, leading to a high specific price (USD/kg payload).

© 2016, Springer-Verlag London.This paper demonstrates the advantages reached on project management of automated solutions when a customized QFD method is applied to this specific objective. The main contribution of this paper is a new matrix to support the project manager to plan requirement verifications over project phases, using the team skills based on customer needs. The application of the proposed method can identify a set of requirements for each project phase, which are critical to project success.

© Emerald Group Publishing Limited.Purpose-This paper aims to propose an evaluation method to compare two different Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) solutions that can be used for on-line programming in an industrial context: a force guidance system and the traditional teach pendant operation. Design/methodology/approach-The method defines three evaluation criteria (agility, accuracy and learning) and describes an experimental approach based on the analysis of variance to verify the performance of guidance systems according to these criteria. This method is used in this paper to compare the traditional teach pendant interface with an implementation of a force guidance system based on the use of an external force/torque sensor. Findings-The application of the proposed method to an off-the-shelf industrial robot shows that the force guidance system has a better performance according to the agility criterion. Both solutions have a similar performance for the accuracy criterion, with a limit of about 2 mm in the achieved position accuracy. Regarding the learning criterion, the authors cannot affirm that any of the methods has an improved agility when the operator repeats the tasks. Practical implications-This work supports the selection of guidance systems to be used in on-line programming of industrial applications. It shows that the force guidance system is an option potentially faster than the teach pendant when the required positioning accuracy is greater than 2 mm. Originality/value-The new method proposed in this paper can be applied to a large range of robots, not being limited to commercial available collaborative robots. Furthermore, the method is appropriate to accomplish further investigations in HRI not only to compare programming methods but also to evaluate guidance systems approaches or robot control systems.

© 2016, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.This paper presents the current status of the development of a new Brazilian Thrust Vector Control (TVC) system, designed for thrust vectoring of the first stages of the Brazil-ian small satellite launch vehicle VLM-1. The TVC system design is brie y described and compared to other systems available in literature. The model philosophy and development strategy is summarized and a verification approach of the vehicle control system, Hardware- in-the-Loop, presented. Experimental data of step responses are analyzed and compared to tests of an actuator flight model of the Brazilian satellite launch vehicle VLS-1.

© 2016 The Authors.In kaizen improvement projects, the stages of analysis, and application of the proposed improvements are often a trial-and-error cycle carried out by direct experimentation. This feature is a major source of uncertainty in resource dimensioning. This paper presents the design and development of a sequence of activities that emphasizes the application of simulation capabilities as a tool to aid the continuous improvement process at discrete manufacturing, in the context of the Lean Manufacturing approach.

© 2016 The authors and IOS Press.This paper presents the integrated product development tool Design for Autonomy for reengineering of foreign complex products. Design for Autonomy is a new member of the Design for X family, which aims at integrating the requirements from the X area, in this case autonomy, into the conceptual phase of the product development process. This tool regards to decision making activities and their outcomes: decisions about the interrelations with the design of products. The objective of Design for Autonomy is to assure that the product can be designed, produced and operated in Brazil for a defined period of time at a minimum risk of being dependent on export bans or unavailability of components. This can be accomplished by the Design for Autonomy model comprising four steps: (1) An analysis to identify critical elements and means for achieving their technological domain; (2) Preparation of nationalization; (3) Reverse engineering of the original product in order to obtain the technological know-how; and (4) Forward engineering including the adaptation for the new environment in Brazil, stimulating improvements and added value. In a pilot project, the Design for Autonomy tool is being successfully applied to the development of a Brazilian thrust vector control system, a subsystem used for attitude control of satellite launch vehicles. The technology originates from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and is transferred to the Brazilian Institute of Aeronautics and Space (DCTA/IAE).

© 2016This paper presents the current status of the development of a Thrust Vector Control system for new Brazilian launch vehicles, looking for the highest performance by closed-loop servo hydraulic actuator identification. Therefore, a test environment with a mass-spring test bench is introduced. Engineering models of two different types of actuators, three-way and four-way valve controlled pistons with direct drive control valves are developed. The dynamic responses are experimentally determined and subsequently mathematically modeled.

© 2016, Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management. All Rights Reserved.This paper investigates how Knowledge Management patterns in a Brazilian Air Force flight test environment can be simulated using a System Dynamics approach. The research has been conducted initially by a literature review on the main Knowledge Management and System Dynamics theories. Data for this research has been collected in a previous study consisted of documental research regarding the flight test environment Knowledge Management and a questionnaire-based survey which identified both a low Knowledge Management maturity level and the flight test core competence as the capability of performing flight test campaigns. The issued problem was the tradeoff between actions focused on performing flight test campaigns versus Knowledge Management to transfer the core competence inside organization in order to keep it in a high level. A system dynamics quantitative model has been developed as a result of this research. Fluxes and stokes were identified within the model and the relation between them emerged by identifying systemic feedback loops that may compromise the Knowledge Management and the core competence transferring. These features enable a holistic visualization and better understanding of the problem as well as the possibilities of identifying ways of improvement.

© 2014 Portland International Conference on Management of Engineering and Technology.The research described herein investigated how Knowledge Management (KM), in a Brazilian Air Force (BAF) flight test environment, was impacted by the establishment of a science and technology management structure. The research was conducted initially by a bibliographic revision on the main KM theories. A documental research regarding the flight test environment KM was done and a questionnaire was submitted to identify KM characteristics previous and after the structure change. With the data obtained, the KM maturity level and the core competence in each moment were identified. Results show that both environments had the same KM maturity level. Particularly, after the structure change, it was possible to observe some development on KM processes. Both environments pointed the capability of performing flight test campaigns as its core competence. The research revealed that the structure change did not impact, in a clear way, the BAF flight test KM maturity level and, as a lesson learned, that the simple adoption of a science and technology management structure has a poor impact on knowledge management maturity level of an organization.

Copyright © 2015 by the International Astronautical Federation.The research on project scheduling problem was intensified from the recognition that network models CPM (Critical Path Method), PERT (Project Evaluation Review Technique) and PDM (Precedence Diagram Method) are based on the assumption that all needed resources will be available. The importance of project scheduling and control is bolstered with many examples where the inadequate scheduling and control are often identified as the most common causes of project failure. Throughout systems life cycle, the techniques and approaches are mainly involved in the planning, programming and control of project activities conducted in context of resource constrained under uncertainties. In addition of scenarios the complexity of the projects, there are some classes of products, typical of the aerospace systems, which are problematic for current methods of resource constrained project scheduling under uncertainty. The existing methods fail because they suffer from one or more of the following limitations: focused mainly on the basic RCPSP (Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem) model; dealing with only one source of uncertainty, mostly in duration of activities; and do not model uncertainties. This paper presents the kinematic model of projects scheduling, considering the inherent restrictions in nature of the projects: precedence of project activities; uncertainties of the duration of project activities; and uncertainties in availability of resources for execution of project activities. The project scheduling may be considered, by an analogy, as a kinematic chain, which is formed by: a set of rigid links (precedence of activities) that are connected by joints (activities of project) with one fixed extremity (activity that represents the beginning of the project) and one free extremity (activity that represents the end of the project). The kinematic model of projects scheduling provides a graph and mathematical model with the advantages: estimation of the project duration and resources due to uncertainties; estimation of the uncertainties due to project duration and resources; improvement of the outcomes of planning and scheduling of project activities; and assists the dynamics of projects providing information for collaboration policy of the durations and resources between project activities and between different projects. This article describes the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem under uncertainties, discusses previous work on planning under uncertainty, and presents the kinematic model of projects scheduling with resource constrained under uncertainties along with an example of generic planning of an energy power subsystem of the space segment.

© 2015 The authors and IOS Press.Projects represent the principal means of materialization of products. The inherent complexity of product projects is treated through the techniques and approaches project management. Throughout products life cycle the techniques and approaches project management are mainly involved in the planning, programming and control of project activities conducted in context of resource constrained under uncertainties. In addition of scenarios the complexity of the projects, there are some classes of products, typical of industries of the defense, aerospace, telecommunication, software, and biomedicine, which are problematic for current methods of resource constrained project planning and scheduling under uncertainty. The existing methods fail because they suffer from one or more of the following limitations: focused mainly on the basic RCPSP (Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem) model; dealing with only one source of uncertainty, mostly in duration of activities; and do not model uncertainties. This paper presents the kinematic model of projects scheduling which considering the inherent restrictions in nature of the projects: precedence among project activities; uncertainties of the duration of project activities; and uncertainties in availability of resources for execution of project activities. The kinematic model of projects scheduling provides a graph and mathematical model with the advantages: estimation of the project duration and resources due to uncertainties; estimation of the uncertainties due to project duration and resources; improvement of the outcomes of planning and scheduling of project activities; and assists the dynamics of projects providing information for collaboration policy of the durations and resources between project activities and between different projects. This article describes the Resource Constrained Project Scheduling Problem under uncertainties, discuss previous work on planning under uncertainty, and presentation of the kinematic model of projects scheduling with resource constrained under uncertainties along with a small example of implementation.

© 2014 by Benoit Malouin.Automated and manual riveting are usual assembly processes in aerospace metallic structures manufacturing such as fuselage and wing panels. During the structural riveting, discrete geometrical deformations are generated due to large plastic displacements among rivets and the structural parts. That may result in dimensional or shape penalties on the segments assembly, and it may require additional production hours to correct the problems induced by the riveting process. The final product may still keep a slight shape deviation detectable by metrology systems (laser tracker, for example). Besides that, the riveting-induced deformation is still understudied in academics, and even within the aeronautical industry. This work is the continuation of some previous exploratory studies aimed to identify the main significant factors and contributors to the induced deformation phenomenon and mechanisms. In this work, an experimental analysis about four selected factors is accomplished: the riveting squeezing deformation level, the interference pin insertion, the sheet material anisotropy (grain direction), and the sheet package thickness for a protruding rivet head geometry. The experiment has shown that the squeezing deformation level and the sheet material anisotropy are major contributors. Also, a simplified algebraic formulation for the induced deformation is proposed and developed hereinafter.

© 2013 The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.This paper proposes a method to design multifunctional robot end-effectors that consider the weight as one of the main design constraint. The motivation for this work comes from aircraft industry. This sector, traditionally characterized by manual processes, has an increasing interest in the use of commercial off-the-shelf robots for the automation of their manufacturing processes. The design method proposed in this paper, named design to weight (DTW), is based on design for excellence (DFX) methodology. In order to illustrate and validate the DTW approach, it is applied to an end-effector that shall embed a set functions related to the riveting operation of aircraft fuselage barrels. The designed end-effector is compared with similar products described in the literature or available in the market. The results show that DTW is an efficient approach that not only provides low-weight solutions but also maintains a compromise with other requirements. On the other hand, the method is sensitive to the choice of relevance and quality factors that depends on the knowledge of the design team about the product under design.

Orbital drilling is a machining process designed to drill holes with a double circular motion, added by a linear displacement in the direction of drilling. A cutting tool is rotating at high speed in an eccentric orbit and simultaneously moves towards the surface of the material to be drilled. The adjustable eccentricity plus the diameter of the tool defines the final diameter of the hole. Orbital drilling is a fatigueless process with good surface finish and burr-free when compared with conventional drilling processes. To implement this process, an automatic orbital drilling device has been designed and built as an end-effector of an industrial robot. The process of developing this device, its requirements, functions and tests are detailed in this paper, resulting in the construction of the EFORB (an acronym in Portuguese of Robotic Orbital Drilling End-effector). This paper presents the latest results with the final version of the system, including the development's integration with an industrial anthropomorphic robot. The results achieved show that the process requirements and tolerances are suitable for aeronautic applications. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

ITA and EMBRAER are currently executing the research project Automation of Aircraft Structural Assembly (AASA) whose goal is to implement a robotic cell for automating the riveting process of aeronautical structures. The proposal described herein complements the AASA project, adds other manufacturing processes, namely sanding and polishing of aircraft surfaces. To implement the additional processes AASA project resources and facilities were used (robots and metrology systems) and devices designed and/or acquired to allow sharing of these resources. Among these, an Automatic Tooling Support for AERonautics structures (ATS-AER) was designed and built; also, a robot tool changer with high load capacity was acquired. The outcome of this research project is the evaluation of the feasibility of automating the processes of sanding and polishing metal surfaces in the aircraft manufacture using robots. The operating method adopted for surface treatment employed the 'U' type trajectory optimised to be run by a KUKA robot KR 500. The sanding process has been applied to aluminum metal sheet specimen sized 2.18ft2 (0.20m2) and used commercial 600 and 800 sandpaper. The automated sanding process yielded an average value of RA 0.48 ± 0.08 which is 25% more efficient when compared to the traditional, manual process whose average value of RA is 0.75 ± 0.51.

A process modeling language for the assembly, integration, and verification (AIV) process of multidisciplinary systems like space research platforms is proposed. The referred language is developed over an ontology framework, built for this specific purpose following a systematic construction approach. Subsequently, the visual notation items and the axiomatic rules for the creation of AIV process models are introduced. The most important concepts can be represented on diagrams that describe the operations sequence, system status evolution, and additional information required for a mutual comprehension of the knowledge domain under study. The AIV process modeling may bring benefits like the identification of an adequate work breakdown structure, the optimal definition of system interfaces, and a powerful mechanism to manage systems under development.

This research aims at proposing adaptations in the quality function deployment (QFD) methodology; analyzing its use to assist business development projects (BDP); and evaluating the results of a case study. In order to support the analysis of the use of QFD in the business development environment, a bibliographic review was performed and a case study of a BDP was set-up and executed in a small enterprise in Brazil. Finds indicate that QFD is a valuable tool to assist BDP; the case study results point up the benefits gathered by organization when the proposed procedure was applied; the adaptations suggested in the QFD matrices make possible the usage of the intrinsic QFD deployment process in the business environment and produced a procedure to assess the completeness of the BDP scope, in which the focus of the QFD deployment process is moved from the deployed characteristics to the evaluation criteria of these characteristics. Because only one case was studied, it was not analyzed the implications of the proposed planning procedure in different types of organizations and projects. Similar studies should be conducted to reveal the effect of these differences. © 2013 The Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering.

The incidents-and-accidents prevention has been receiving an increasing consideration from authorities and aircraft manufacturers. One method to comply with the requirements includes aircraft certification testing of systems - which are usually associated with long time frames and high costs. Besides, they usually demand specialized technical devices and skilled manpower. The use of analogous models to a system might reduce several steps and costs of such test procedures. These models might also contain important information about the tested system to be explored in a risk analysis. This work demonstrates how the parameters of an electrical circuit analogous to a landing gear system on a free drop test can be used as research tools to start a risk analysis based on human factors. The results can be easily grouped and tabulated, allowing us to demonstrate the versatility of the method presented herein and to conclude that this analysis can be expanded into a new area of research on systems' safety. © 2013 Brazilian Society for Automatics - SBA.

The continued growth of the general aviation fleet demands the need of forever improved preventive methods of failure analysis, in order to reduce the number of incidents or accidents. It has been proved that one possible solution to avoid unsafe conditions is the installation of new avionic systems. This article presents the method named IMFLAR - an Intuitive Method For a Logical Avionics Reliability, an analysis method for avionic systems installations based on a conceptual model of human factors and an artificial neural network application, giving an overview of these installations and analyzing the involved risk factors. This is a new preventive approach that establishes a relationship between unsafe characteristics observed during the installation of avionic systems and an operational database of incidents and accidents, in order to provide a framework to make aviation safer. Additionally, this article describes the steps to obtain the necessary parameters that ought to be used to avoid unsafe conditions for a modification that installs an avionics system in the aircraft.

The civil aircraft development cycle structure has been changing dramatically. The time from a go-ahead to a first delivery has been shortened, which puts a considerable amount of pressure on specification, design, manufacture, and testing efforts. The guarantee of a safe flight and the increasing complexity of the new generation of aircraft are forcing the industry to develop innovative techniques for new programs. Simulation has been proven to be a valuable tool that can be used. Nevertheless, the potential of simulation has not fully been explored in some phases of the aircraft development process. In flight test campaigns, it is already common to use simulation to predict an aircraft's behavior prior to the flight or even to structure a flight test proposal. An iterative approach considering flight testing, model updates, campaign reevaluation would be efficient and safe. This manuscript discusses the matter and proposes a process that would enhance flight test campaign efficiency with interactive use of intensive simulation. The manuscript also highlights relevant aspects of the implementation of this process. Preliminary results obtained from a regional jet climb flight test campaign show that it is possible to compress the initial test matrix when an adequate model is used in conjunction with flight data. Copyright © 2012 by Embraer Flight Test, São José dos Campos, Brazil.

This work presents the use of a temporal filter, named Dynamic Retina, instead of spatial-neighborhood operators to process the image. Originally, this kind of filter has been proposed for use in mobile robot platforms for analyzing sequences of images [1]. The use of this filter could be adapted to enhance the defects on the aluminum surfaces by taking advantage of the intrinsic vibration of the industrial robot arm that drives the vision system to acquire images. This vibration generates small differences on each image that are sufficient to detect scratches. Mostly, the finishing process of aluminum surfaces in the aeronautic industries is currently carried out manually by trained operators; nevertheless certain steps can be automated using this technology. © 2012 CZECH TECH UNIV.

The alignment of aircraft fuselages in the aerospace sector is currently done either manually or by complex, expensive automated systems. The manual process introduces a significant production delay and the automated systems are purpose-built and have limited flexibility, apart from its financial drawback. This work proposes a low-cost, high-flexibility system and, as part of it, evaluates the performance of a Rotary-Laser Automatic Theodolite (R-LAT) as a feedback source for the adaptive robot control of an anthropomorphic manipulator. In the proposed solution the robot carries a fuselage barrel and aligns it with respect to a second barrel. A high accuracy, frequency-modulated laser equipment is used to generate the reference system for the procedure. The measurements of the R-LAT are then verified with the frequency-modulated laser equipment in order to determine the linear and angular alignment tolerances achieved by the robot/R-LAT closed loop in a predefined work envelope. A throughout, step-by-step analysis of the measuring procedure is carried out to allow the recognition of error sources and thus the determination of an optimized method. These results identify the operation boundaries of the R-LAT within the process and yield its best configuration for the intended purpose. Using the EN ISO 9283 robot evaluation standard, the closed loop system was found to attain the nominal position with an average accuracy of 0.38 mm and 0.01°, contrasting with an average accuracy of 4.53 mm and 0.21° when the robot was operating in an open loop configuration. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated assembly of components and parts has been largely applied in aerospace industry due to several advantages such as low cost, high flexibility, reduction of floor space and high repeatability of process. The work described herein is part of the activities being carried at the Aircraft Structure Assembly Automation Laboratory (ASAA Lab). An outcome of a partnership between the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA) and the Brazilian aerospace sector, the ASAA Lab is developing an automated process for the assembly of aircraft fuselages. This process [1] is constituted of two main steps: the leveling and alignment of the fuselage barrels and the drilling and riveting procedures that join the barrels together. This paper is related to the first step, a method and a system for positioning and aligning aircraft parts one in relation to each other during the structural assembly using robots with articulated arms as positioning means assisted by large volume measurement systems. Copyright © 2012 SAE International.

This work presents the EFIP project (Efetuador de Furação e Inserção de Prendedores, Portuguese for "Effector of Drilling and Fasteners Inserter"), a robot end-effector design for implementing an automatic riveting process used in manufacturing aircraft fuselage components. The EFIP is mounted in an industrial anthropomorphic robot, with a seven-meter (7m) linear unit able to range over the entire side of an aircraft fuselage section. The end-effector has several modules that allows for a one-step-drilling process, including a special drill with chamfer; automatic rivet delivery; automatic rivet insertion; sealant applicator for each rivet; perpendicular drilling correction mechanism; clamp force control loop, and means for visual inspection. Each module can work independently or in integration with others, controlled by a graphical interface in a remote station. Other support devices complete the system, managing chip aspiration, tool cleaning and lubrication, liquid cooling of the spindle, and sub-systems to ensure safety. Integration of the end-effector and robot controllers are described in detail. Full functionality of the EFIP has been demonstrated in experiments testing its operational performance. The results have shown high stability in the drilling process, with the capability index (Cp) for the holes created nearing sigma 4. Copyright © 2012 SAE International.

The analysis of alternatives during the concept exploration must support the transformation of a need into a balanced design, must be able to reconcile the differences in the present set of physical and functional requirements and must evaluate the operational scenarios in terms of several attributes. However, the analysis of alternatives in the early stages of complex systems development is poorly structured and characterized by not sufficient detail for the assessment of the initially identified needs. The understanding of the relationship between the preferences of stakeholders and potential solutions for the systemic analysis of alternative designs is one of the most important activities in pursuit of information that can distinguish good from bad solutions. The evaluation of the system properties during the project requires the ability to analyze and map the architecture value space to find the best solutions. Thus, decisions made early in the development of a program should be supported by systems engineering analysis, involving teams of users, purchasers and others involved in the project, namely the stakeholders. In this paper are discussed several value dimensions and implications for the systems development to achieve and balancing value in complex system development. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

This paper describes an Air Traffic Control (ATC) cognitive complexity indicator yielded from a human-in-the-loop simulation. The analysis used to this end employs factor analysis for the identification of the correlation between cognitive complexity and several cognitive complexity and workload metrics. Thereby, a single complexity indicator has been developed. It has proved to be more responsive to the overall complexity than any of the other subjective metrics alone. Nonetheless, there is indication that the proposed complexity indicator must not be taken alone, but analyzed together with other metrics. The paper also tackles the impacts of traffic history, automation and optimized schedules on the perceived complexity and how these impacts should be taken into consideration on the design of future concepts of ATC operations. This is done through the application of the proposed indicator into several ATC scenarios. © 2010 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.

The aircraft fuselage assembly process is too labor intensive and highly manual within the Brazilian aircraft industry. Foreign companies of this industrial segment started the adoption of automated solutions in the last two decades. Their automated solutions are very product dependent as well as very expensive. This kind of solution is inadequate for the Brazilian aircraft industry. This paper shows the preliminary results of a flexible, low cost automated system specially designed to fit the Brazilian requirements. This is based upon the usage of industrial robots for general purposes. In order to check the feasibility of such a solution, the process requirements are expressed in terms of accuracy, repeatability and resolution of the robots. These characteristics are measured by two independent, state-of-art measurement systems, namely, Indoor GPS and photogrammetry device. The initial results allow one to conclude that the robot can be used for the purpose described herein as long as it is assisted by correction process based upon the very measurement systems used to acquire its operational characteristics.

"Why Embraer Flight Test Division is not able to sustain a hundred flight hours per mount per prototype?" This question has been raised by program managers during EMB 170/190 family certification process. After that, a diagnostic study demonstrated that Embraer development process was centered in flight test as a main resource to develop and to show compliance with requirements. A change was needed since flight test is the most expensive and time consuming means of development. With this motivation, in 2005 a set of research and development projects was started with the goal of obtaining a reduction in flight test cycle and in the level of corrections after aircraft release to test and release to field. The core of these integrated projects was the domain of key technologies associated with flight by wire and systems integration based on a modeling and simulation strategy. The Embraer Flight Test Division started also one project with the main goal of optimizing the flight test campaign by transferring the development effort from flight test to ground test and modeling and simulation. In addition, in 2008 Embraer launched programs with high level of complex and integrated systems that represent a great step in terms of technological evolution and, once again, the risk of flight test phase go out of schedule has been raised. This challenge forced a new strategy for the development process with a Kaizen approach with focus on flight test in the context of the development. In this paper, all the Embraer Flight Test efforts and results to change the development process in order to allow a better balance between flight test, ground test and modeling and simulation is presented. As a conclusion, aircraft systems evolution - that means continuous increase in complexity necessary to assure product competitive - forces the Embraer Flight Test Division to develop a continual improvement approach to keep commitment with schedule, costs and quality in a new aircraft development.

Several studies confirm the benefits of anticipating and solving problems that might occur in a product lifecycle in the conceptual phase of the IPD - Integrated Product Development process. The challenge posed by the IPD is to develop adequate tools and procedures to make the required anticipation feasible. One problem faced by the IPD is to control the variation of the product manufacturing process that impacts directly on both product cost and delivery schedules. Corrective actions must be anticipated and carried out to reduce this variability and improve the product quality right from the beginning of the process. This paper presents the Design for Quality Costs - DFQC - a method for minimizing the non-quality costs of the new products through the anticipation of improvements in the product manufacturing process and/or product design. The proposed method is based on the concepts of Lean Engineering Thinking and DFSS - Design for Six Sigma. This paper also shows that the proposed method might be applied in the virtual environment built by Digital Manufacturing software commercially available.

The purpose of this paper is to present the stakeholder value architecture trade off method, and to demonstrate it analyzing the Lunar Exploration Mission. Nowadays space mission development requires a high level of sustainability that only can be given by stakeholders who need to be assured that they will receive the required amount of system value over a specific period of time. This sustainability is translated by the system architecture attributes as cost, time, performance and risk which represent system effectiveness. Considering that about 80% of the life cycle cost, performance, risk and schedule of a project are committed by decisions made during design concept exploration; this paper addresses several questions such as: how to improve such architectures evaluations? How to evaluate architectures through how much stakeholder value cost, performance, risk and schedule system attributes? These questions do reflect the state of art of the design trade off process regarding to conceptual phase. The paper proposes a subtle but closer to reality paradigm shift: Trade the importance stakeholders give to performance, cost, risk and schedule attributes rather than those attributes themselves.

Nowadays manufacturing companies are facing the challenge of meeting increasing specific customer needs and even so, to offer short delivery times and low price products. Companies must have flexibility to customize products in a rapid way. A product customization strategy, named "Postponement", has been adopted by a growing number of companies to address the products' differentiation requirements, demanded by the new global market. This paper aims to contrast and compare a proposed postponement strategy definition method with existing postponement approaches found in the literature. The paper reviews various approaches from different authors, to identify how postponement is described in terms of its benefits, implementation barriers, factors that enable or make difficult its practice and the relationship with other theories and techniques. The paper then highlights the contribution given by a proposed method to plan and implement the postponement strategy in a company, using a concurrent engineering perspective. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

One the most difficult aspects of system conceptualization process is to recognize, understand and manage the trade-offs in a way that maximizes the success of the product. This is particularly important for space projects. In this way, a major part of the system engineer's role is to provide information that the system manager can use to make the right decisions. This includes identification of alternative architectures and characterization of those elements in a way that helps managers to find out, among the alternatives, a design that provides a better combination of the various technical areas involved in the design. Space mission architecture consists of a broad system concept which is the most fundamental statement of how the mission will be carried out and satisfy the stakeholders. The architecture development process starts with the stakeholder analysis which enables the identification of the decision drivers, then, the requirements are analysed for elaborationg the system concept. Effectiveness parameters such as performance, cost, risk and schedule are the outcomes of the stakeholder analysis which are labelled as decision drivers to be used in a trade off process to improve the managerial mission decisions. Thus, the proposal presented herein provides a means for innovating the mission design process by identifying drivers through stakeholder analysis and use them in a trade off process to obtain the stakeholder satisfaction with effectiveness parameters. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

The objective of the article is to compare the Engineering and Design fields in relation to the Product Development Process (PDP). In both areas we can identify different methodologies that guide, each one under its own optic, the Product Project. Although aiming the same objective, the Product Development, these two fields present a certain disconnection, if we compare the models presented in the literature. This can be explained by the fact that Engineering traditionally develops the products with emphasis in the technical aspects of the products and Design investigates the interfaces of the users with the products. Considering this, this article consists in a theoretical discussion regarding to an appropriation of planning models of the Product Development by the Design field, from the problem solving process as well as the systematization and coordination of the creation activity. As conclusion, the work presents a methodological systematization with the implementation of new techniques for the process of Design, focusing at the trends adopted for the corporations that search constant innovation, efficiency of the products and services, and adaptation to the changes, among others factors. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

To assess the completeness of a Business Development Project (BDP) is not a simple task. The usage of some design method such as QFD eases but does not solve completely the problem, because the information displayed in the QFD matrices is highly dependent of the experience and intuition of the design team. This paper presents a case study of a BDP, where the completeness of the project was assessed through a slightly modified view of QFD: instead of looking at the market requirements themselves, it is proposed to find out the ways the requirements are accomplished. This procedure made possible the identification of the not covered portion of the market requirements and guided the project revision. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London Limited.

© 2006 The authors. All rights reserved.Start-up companies during their business development process could face a decision dilemma that makes them wonder if their resources should be applied to support the present operation or to promote the required business improvements. An approach using the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) is presented to overcome this impasse and one of the possible identified solutions is described, where the requirements of a national quality award e.g. the Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) are used to reduce the effects of the identified dilemma. Finally, a case study is exposed where the quality function deployment (QFD) is proposed to assist the early planning phases of a business development process.

© 2006 The authors. All rights reserved.This paper aims to develop, demonstrate and justify a quantitative method that identifies the best kind and optimal level of postponement that should be adopted in an Aerospace Company to promote production cost reduction, improving customer service, offering short times of delivery and increasing the overall program profit. This method also intends to determine the best time to make the main decisions during the product development project.

Lean manufacturing is a new and revolutionary way of manufacturing and assembling products. It is the next logical step in the evolutionary chain of manufacturing technologies, following on the heels of its predecessors, craft production and mass production. This monograph explains the conception of lean manufacturing principles, how they were adapted for the aerospace industry and how they are being incorporated by Embraer, the brazilian aircraft manufacturing company, also evaluating what has been done to successfully pave the way for its implementation. It is clear through the reading that successful implementation requires, first and above, a firm compromise of the upper management with a complete adhesion to the "muda" seeking-and- elimination culture. This work focuses on the positive results of tentative steps towards the first phases of lean manufacturing in an industry that traditionally produces a high technology leading-edge product, using already proven manufacturing systems.

The selection of effective metrics for monitoring business processes, specially t h e ones related to the Engineering Design Process, can be not only very time consuming, considering the number of activities that are usually fou nd in this process, but also can lead to the selection of metrics that measure a non-representative aspect of the process, or will not be considered by the decision makers in the course of action. To prevent this situation and save company's resources, it is necessary to identify the right set of metrics, that is, the ones that will influence the enterprise's strategy. One way to achieve this is to deploy a given strategy into aspects that can be easily u nd ersto od by tactical and operational staffs (where the major part of the Engineering Design activities happens). This paper presents the general view of a method for choosing appropriate metrics for the engineering design process and is focused on demonstrating the usefulness of the Balanced Scorecard formulation approach to accomplish both, the deployment and the election of the key pro cesses where the metrics selection will be performed. Two industrial case studies are presented where the proposed approach has been tested, with good results.

Recently, the success in new product development process has become one of the main competitive advantages. Thus, many companies are looking for improving their new product development (NPD) process, to launching products as fast as possible with the required quality and low costs. To achieve such objectives, many organizations have designed phasedreview processes that cut across functional areas of the NPD. One such process with wide acceptance is the Phase Review Process. Phase Reviews are checkpoints that take place at key periods in the product development process to review the opportunity/development effort, assess it from a business and strategic perspective, and determine whether it is worthy to continue the development, redirect or kill it. New product development best practices usually include such processes, however little has been written on how to implement such practices. The available literature reports generic issues and recommendations, without describing a structured approach. This paper describes and analyzes a practical phase review implementation process, pointing out difficulties and stating recommendations to improve and support a successful implementation. The results, compiled after an industrial case study, show clearly the improvements achieved for the proposed implementation.

This work presents the implementation and comparison of three different techniques of three-dimensional computer vision as follows: Stereo vision - correlation between two 2D images Sensorial fusion - use of different sensors: camera 2D + ultrasound sensor (1D); Structured light The computer vision techniques herein presented took into consideration the following characteristics: Computational effort (elapsed time for obtain the 3D information); Influence of environmental conditions (noise due to a non uniform lighting, overlighting and shades); The cost of the infrastructure for each technique; Analysis of uncertainties, precision and accuracy. The option of using the Matlab software, version 5.1, for algorithm implementation of the three techniques was due to the simplicity of their commands, programming and debugging. Besides, this software is well known and used by the academic community, allowing the results of this work to be obtained and verified. Examples of three-dimensional vision applied to robotic assembling tasks ("pick-and-place") are presented.

During machining process the knowledge of the temperature is the most important factor in tool analysis. It allows to control main factors that influence tool use, life time and waste. The temperature in the contact area between the piece and the tool is resulting from the material removal in cutting operation and it is too difficult to be obtained because the tool and the work piece are in motion. One way to measure the temperature in this situation is detecting the infrared radiation. This work presents a new methodology for diagnosis and monitoring of machining processes with the use of infrared images. The infrared image provides a map in gray tones of the elements in the process: tool, work piece and chips. Each gray tone in the image corresponds to a certain temperature for each one of those materials and the relationship between the gray tones and the temperature is gotten by the previous of infrared camera calibration. The system developed in this work uses an infrared camera, a frame grabber board and a software composed by three modules. The first module makes the image acquisition and processing. The second module makes the feature image extraction and performs the feature vector. Finally, the third module uses fuzzy logic to evaluate the feature vector and supplies the tool state diagnostic as output.

This paper describes a Brazilian experience in manufacturing education of engineers, based upon the use of computer integration tools available at the Center of Competence in Manufacturing (CCM). CCM was built as part of IBM's CIM in Higher Education program and its main purpose is to disseminate the Computer Integrated Product Development (CIPD) concept to students and professionals in the field of manufacturing. In order to show the impact of the CCM on manufacturing education improvement, this paper discusses the Computer Integrated Product Development concept applied to aircraft design.

This paper describes a Brazilian experience in manufacturing education of engineers based upon the use of computer integration tools available at the Center of Competence in Manufacturing (CCM). CCM was built as part of IBM's CIM in Higher Education program and its main purpose is to disseminate the Computer Integrated Product Development (CIPD) concept to students and professionals in the field of manufacturing. In order to show the impact of the CCM on manufacturing education improvement, this paper discusses the Computer Integrated Product Development concept applied to aircraft design.

A semi-automatic method for calibrating a robot-vision interface is presented. It puts a small work-load on the operator, requires a simple calibration jig and a solution of a very simple system of equations. It has been extensively used in an experimental robotic cell set up at Loughborough University of Technology, where various aspects of the manufacturing and the decoration of scale models are being investigated. As an extension of the calibration procedure, the paper also shows practical solutions for the problem of dealing with three dimensional objects using a single camera. © 1992, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.

A vision based robotic assembly cell has been set up to examine the problems and possibilities associated with decoration of scale model cars. Decoration in this context, is the placement of logos, numbers and names on the respective models. In its present configuration, the proof-of-concept cell consists of a conveyor system, a commercial vision system, two robots, a tampo printing machine, a commercial expert system shell and an off-line programming and simulation capability. The paper compares the overall process of the existing factory based system with that of the robotic cell for some typical decoration tasks and describes the new mechatronic concepts which have been incorporated into it. © 1991.