SAPHARI

The AIRBUS Group (originally European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company - EADS) is the largest aerospace company in Europe and the second largest worldwide (http://www.airbusgroup.com). Airbus is market leader in civil aeronautics, defence technology, helicopters, space, missiles, military transport and combat aircraft and the associated services. Within AIRBUS group, the Innovation Works research network is responsible for the upstream research and technology activities of the group. Its two main sites near Paris and Munich employ approximately 600 people including doctorates and university interns. Innovation Works is committed to promoting product and process improvements, towards leaner solutions and to increase the performance of manual work in order to keep production in Europe.

The main research team involved in SAPHARI is the Assembly, Robotics and C2TR team, whose mission is the development and the evaluation of innovative solutions for aircraft manufacturing, including factory modelling, robotic applications, portable assist devices and assembly tools. The team participates in co-operative projects including European projects PISA (Flexible Assembly Systems through Workplace-Sharing and Time-Sharing Human-Machine Cooperation) and AFFIX (Aligning, Holding and Fixing Flexible and Difficult to Handle Components) as well as French national projects including ENCA (Etude Nouveaux Concepts Assemblage) and AVIBUS (Assistance VIBratoire au perçage par actionneUrs piézoélectriqueS).

Within the holonic approach of SAPHARI, AIRBUS will pull research towards actual industrial use cases and identified issues stopping the successful introduction of cooperative robots in manufacturing lines. First, AIRBUS will produce requirements and use cases for industrial cooperative robotics applications, implement and evaluate some of the produced results within the aeronautical industry. AIRBUS will develop safe end tool concepts and work on the safety assessment and acceptance improvement of the produced results. Finally, AIRBUS will look at existing industrial standards and standardisation committees, in order to conciliate the complexity of safe robot interaction and the need of simple to apply standards.

Key researchers

Adolfo SUAREZ ROOS is research manager and AIRBUS Expert in robotics at AIRBUS Group Innovation Works. He obtained in 1997 a PhD. degree from the Université d’Evry val d’Essonne, France, has authored more than 10 publications and holds 4 patents. He previously worked on the industrial robot applications for the automotive assembly lines and on mobile service robots for domestic use. He is currently working on new robot applications and intelligent assist systems. He led the Work package 5: Overall System Design and Integration Subproject of the PISA Project.

Patrice RABATE leads the Assembly Robotics and C2TR research team at AIRBUS Group Innovation Works. He holds an engineer diploma in material and process sciences from the Ecoles des Mines d’Albi. He holds 4 patents. He joined the company in 2002 and has since been involved in research for machining, assembly process & robotics and support to Airbus to validate a flexible robot assembly production line. He has participated on several scientific associations like AUTGV and GIFAS. He is actually based in Méaulte where he manages technology transfer and participates to the creation of a regional research center dedicated to industrial robotics, called InsdustriLab.