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A novel accurate positioning method of reference hole for complex surface in aircraft assembly

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Abstract

In the digital drilling and riveting process of complex surfaces such as aircraft panels, the reference hole is pre-drilled on the skin surface. Generally, four laser displacement sensors (LDSs) are used as a group for normal adjustment. The camera vision is used to determine the position of the reference hole to obtain the accurate positioning of the drilling position. However, while dealing with large curvature complex panel surface and panel edge, four LDSs have the problem of reflection laser disappearance or matching failure. Applying two LDSs for normal adjustment on one side, the projection of the reference hole on the camera focal plane is an ellipse which means a further normal adjustment is desired in the direction of the ellipse’s minor axis. Therefore, this paper proposes a 3-dimensional pose estimation method (TDPEM) combining multi-sensor fusion and space geometry to realize the normal adjustment and position measurement of reference holes with a monocular camera and two LDSs. Firstly, two LDSs are used to adjust the reference hole’s horizontal (or vertical) direction. And then, an ellipse contour extraction algorithm is proposed to determine the ellipse parameters. Finally, the pose of the reference hole on the panel is determined by a spatial circle reverse algorithm. The experiment proves that the position error and angle error between this algorithm and the traditional four-LDS–based measurement method are within 0.03 mm and 0.2°, respectively, which verifies the feasibility and reliability of this algorithm.

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Funding

This project is supported by key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91748204), Science Fund for Creative Research Groups of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51821093), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2019YFB1707504).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Advanced Manufacturing Technology of Zhejiang Province, College of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Qiang Zhang, Jintong Liu, Shouguo Zheng & Cijun Yu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic System, College of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Cijun Yu

Authors
  1. Qiang Zhang
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  2. Jintong Liu
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  3. Shouguo Zheng
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  4. Cijun Yu
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Contributions

The idea of the manuscript was conceived by Qiang Zhang, Jintong Liu, and Shouguo Zheng. The work planning and numerical and experimental works were performed by Qiang Zhang and Shouguo Zheng. The manuscript was written by Qiang Zhang and Jintong Liu. All the authors contributed to the final version of the manuscript by providing critical feedback that helped in shaping the overall research and consequently the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Cijun Yu.

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I hereby declare that this manuscript has not been submitted to any other journal for simultaneous consideration. The submitted work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any form or language. The results have been presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation (including image-based manipulation). Proper acknowledgments to other works have been given and permissions have been secured for copyrighted material.

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Zhang, Q., Liu, J., Zheng, S. et al. A novel accurate positioning method of reference hole for complex surface in aircraft assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 119, 571–586 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08244-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-021-08244-3

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