SBIR-STTR Award

Wilder Systems has developed a robotic drilling system for aircraft structures manufacturing. This product has achieved Technical Readiness Level 7 and will be transitioning into full rate production of new aircraft with multiple commercial customers in 2019. A new application for this dual use technology has been identified in heavy aircraft structures maintenance, specifically drilling out rivets as part of the fuselage and wing panel replacement process at the depot. The Wilder Systems drilling solution aims to reduce human labor during these replacements, allowing those employees to be redeployed to complete higher-skilled tasks throughout the depots and avoid career-impacting shoulder and elbow injuries. In addition, reduced cycle time from the use of robotics will greatly reduce overall aircraft ground time, returning the equipment to the warfighter up to several days faster.

The USAF spends $12 billion annually on depot-level maintenance, over $1 billion which is aircraft skin defastening. Defastening is conducted to replace cracked skin components and to allow inspection of interior structural components. Skin panel replacement occurs daily across all aircraft types of the various DoD branches and will become more common as the fleet ages. Wilder Systems has developed a mobile Agile Manufacturing Robot (AMR) for aircraft manufacturing that will be adapted to solve this problem. The main technical objective is to refine the AMR design to meet Air Force T.O. specifications for aircraft defastening and develop a working solution. Design tasks include optimizing the system for the target aircraft structure; development of an automated component reverse engineering and robot path planning procedure; and identification of system enhancements necessary for operation. End users will validate the design at Critical Design Review which will allow Wilder Systems to fabricate, integrate, and test. The proposed advancements to the AMR will enable the Air Force to fly more sorties with their existing fleet, reduce maintenance costs and improve maintainer ergonomics. The total savings across all aircraft will be transformational for the Air Force in terms of cost, manpower, and asset utilization.