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Significant effort has been applied to the introduction of automation for the structural assembly of aircraft. However, the equipping of the aircraft with internal services such as hydraulics, fuel, bleed-air and electrics and the attachment of movables such as ailerons and flaps remains almost exclusively manual and little research has been directed towards it. The problem is that the process requires lengthy assembly methods and there are many complex tasks which require high levels of dexterity and judgement from human operators. The parts used are prone to tolerance stack-ups, the tolerance for mating parts is extremely tight (sub-millimetre) and access is very poor. All of these make the application of conventional automation almost impossible. A possible solution is flexible metrology assisted collaborative assembly. This aims to optimise the assembly processes by using a robot to position the parts whilst an operator performs the fixing process.

A modern aircraft wing contains many complex pipes and ducts which, amongst other functions, form the fuel management and bleed air systems. These parts are often fabricated from thin sheet material using a combination of forming and welding and the manufacturing process is predominantly manual requiring highly skilled labor. Since each wing may only contain one or two of each part type the product volumes are very low, typically a few hundred per year. This means that conventional mass production approaches used in, for example the automotive industry, are not economically viable and the parts are thus disproportionately expensive. The current fabrication process involves splitting the component into parts that can be press formed from sheet, laser trimmed and then manually welded together in a fixture. This process requires a perfect fit between the parts whose quality is reliant on the initial forming process.