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Aerospace manufacturing requires efficient manufacturing processes. Composite materials are extensively used and manufacturing processes must evolve to overcome composite constraints for manufacturing and joining. Bolting is an extended joining process for composite materials in which a deformable blind bolt is stressed until joining forces are high enough to cause bolt breakage and ensure sufficient compression forces in the joint. Among bolting methods, blind bolting is an efficient composite joining method that enables the construction of aerospace composite structures accessing joints from a single side of the joint (front side), thus allowing for constructing closed structures where accessing the back side (blind side) is not possible. However, not being able to access the deformed head at the blind side prevents to perform a quality control and ensure a proper bolt deformation and a proper installation.

In this paper a new concept of portable-crawler robotic system for wing spars drilling during their assembly phase will be presented. The solution developed, named ROPTALMU, consists of a drilling robot that is brought along the shop floor to the wing assembly tooling by means of an automated guided vehicle (AGV). Once in front of the tooling, the drilling robot is detached from the AGV and fixed securely and accurately to the tooling structure. Then a first set of holes is drilled inside the robot's reach. After this, in order to work in another product's working zone, the robot is able to walk automatically along the tooling. Once the work finished in the whole product, the robot is put again in the AGV and brought to the next product tooling. The system has been conceived so that it is able to adapt to a wide variety (different families) of wing spars performing drilling tasks on materials such as aluminum, CF and titanium.