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The rising demand for civil aircraft leads to the development of flexible and adaptive production systems in aviation industry. Due to economic efficiency, operational accuracy and high performance these manufacturing and assembly systems must be technologically robust and standardized. The current aircraft assembly and its jigs are characterized by a high complexity with poor changeability and low adaptability. In this context, the use of industrial robots and standardized jigs promise highly flexible and accurate complex assembly operations. This paper deals with the flexible and adaptable aircraft assembly based on industrial robots with special end-effectors for shaping operations. By the development and use of lightweight gripper system made of carbon fiber reinforced plastics the required scaling, robustness and stiffness of the whole assembly system can be realized.

Despite the increasing application of automated systems, manual tasks still plays an important role in industrial production. The intelligence and flexibility of human enable quick response and adaptive production for the individual requirements and the changes in market. Moreover, some manufacturing tasks with sensible and high-value components (e.g., in electronic and aircraft production) requires attentive manual handling. Regarding the requirement of increasing productivity as well as ergonomic improvement and the aging of the employees, there is a significant need for technologies which support the staff individually by performing tasks. Human Hybrid Robot, a hybrid system with direct coupling (serial and/or parallel) of human and mechatronic elements, is a new trend in application of robotic technologies for supporting manual tasks. It realizes a synchronous and bidirectional interaction between human and mechatronic and/or mechanic elements in the same workspace.