Lockheed Martin, Xaba Test AI-Enabled Robots for Airplane Manufacturing

Lockheed Martin and Xaba have announced the completion of a collaboration that tested AI-driven robots for airframe manufacturing.

The project combined Lockheed Martin’s pipeline of industrial robots with Xaba’s AI neural network model xCognition.

According to Xaba, xCognition acts as a “synthetic brain” in that it can make any industrial robot autonomous, giving the robotic system a greater awareness of its surroundings and allowing it to generate and complete its own tasks.

Integrating robotics into the industrial manufacturing processes has gained increased interest in recent years, though demand for accurate, repeatable robotic capabilities to perform more precise tasks such as laser welding, drilling and precise assembly remains high.

To test the AI system, the partners deployed it in a typical aerospace factory environment to see how xCognition could improve a robot’s performance.

The test consisted of two phases, assessing the robot’s performance in maintaining “accurate and consistent trajectory positioning” with and without xCognition and assessing the robot’s performance drilling specified areas of an aluminum test plate. 

Results showed xCognition improved the accuracy and consistency of the commercial robot by 10 times.

“The accuracy performance of a robotic system limits the type of process it can perform based on the cost efficiency of the accuracy hardware,” said Matthew Galla, applications engineer staff for Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics business. “The test with the xCognition controller allows us to rethink how we can accelerate innovation in manufacturing.”

“Our xCognition AI-driven control system opens a new world of application opportunities for industrial robots and cobots,” said Massimiliano Moruzzi, Xaba’s CEO.