Fixtureless Alignment of Joining Partners within the Assembly of Aluminum Space Frame Structures

Light-weight aluminium space frame structures are frequently used for small-volume products, such as sports cars. The assembly of these products has so far been mainly manual and requires the use of complex and expensive fixtures. To increase the profitability, the research conducted at wbk Institute of Production Science is aiming to achieve an automated, fixtureless assembly of such structures by the use of industrial robots. To achieve the required accuracies regarding the alignment of the joining partners, a new approach based on component-inherent markings has been developed. This article describes the approach for the fixtureless positioning of components and the validation of the marking detection.