Research on collaborative measurement methods for aircraft digital assembly

Digital measurement technology used for aircraft assembly is to meet the requirements of each link in the aircraft assemble process, to integrate digital measurement into the aircraft assemble process, and to improving the accuracy of component assembly. At present, the measurement process involves a large number of departments such as design, manufacturing, product process, inspection, and assembly, which would result in a huge workload and volume of measurement data. In this context, a variety of digital measurement equipment, such as laser trackers, indoor GPS, laser scanners, photogrammetry systems, and laser radar, are used to from a collaborative measurement system, which is built to complete resource fusion and data fusion, so as to form a solution for on-site assembly with high precision, efficiency and flexibility. Firstly, according to the measurement process requirements, digital measurement technology should be integrated into all aspects of aircraft assembly, and a 3D measurement process model construction method is proposed. Then, in the process model, a digital method using multiple measurement devices is proposed. The corresponding algorithm and a method of calculating iterative initial values is proposed to improve the accuracy. Finally, a collaborative measurement platform based on laser tracker and indoor GPS is designed for the assembly process for the large part of an aircraft. The accuracy of the algorithm is verified, which proves the correctness and reliability of the method provided in this paper.