A path planning method for compliant jointing of weakly rigid helicopter fuselage

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a strategy for the final assembly of helicopter fuselage with weak rigidity parts and mismatched jointing butt ends.Design/methodology/approachThe strategy is based on path planning methods. Compared with traditional path planning methods, the configuration-space and collision detection in the method are different. The obstacles in the configuration-space are weakly rigid and allow continuous contact with the robot. The collision detection is based on interference magnitudes, and the result is divided into no collision, weak collision and strong collision. Only strong collision is unacceptable. Then a compliant jointing path planning algorithm based on RRT is designed, combined with some improvements in search efficiency.FindingsA series of planning results show that the efficiency of this method is higher than original RRT under the same conditions. The effectiveness of the method is verified by a series of simulations and experiments on two sets of systems.Originality/valueThere are few reports on the automation technology of helicopter fuselage assembly. This paper analyzes the problem and provides a solution from the perspective of path planning. This method contains a new configuration-space and collision detection method adapted to this problem and could be intuitive for the jointing of other weakly rigid parts.