ABB Robots in Aircraft Assembly: Rivets to CabinMarker

From 1942 riveting teams to Airbus's CabinMarker seat robot, how aircraft assembly is automating and where ABB Absolute Accuracy and RobotStudio fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

In October 1942, Alfred Palmer photographed riveting teams at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach, California. One worker drove each rivet with an air gun while a partner held a bucking bar behind the panel. A bomber needed an enormous number of rivets, and every one was set by a pair of hands.

Woman in a red jacket riveting an aircraft window frame while a man braces from inside
Woman in a red jacket riveting an aircraft window frame while a man braces from inside

A riveting team at work on an aircraft at Douglas Aircraft, Long Beach, California, October 1942. Photo: Alfred T. Palmer / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Airliner factories now use big automated machines to drill and rivet wings and fuselage panels, but the inside of the plane is still mostly hand work. On the Airbus A321 line, fitters measured and marked every seat position along the cabin floor by hand before anyone could bolt a seat down.

Green primed airliner fuselage in a large factory hall with orange work platforms
Green primed airliner fuselage in a large factory hall with orange work platforms

Fuselage sections and wings on an Airbus A321 final assembly line. Photo: DearEdward / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Assembly Magazine reported this month on Airbus's fix, a robot called CabinMarker. The 4 kg machine drives along the unfinished cabin, programmed straight from CAD files, and marks where each seat goes. The job drops from 150 minutes to 30, and the first two units go to the A321XLR line in Toulouse in late 2026.

Empty airliner cabin with rows of blue leather seats
Empty airliner cabin with rows of blue leather seats

Rows of seats in an airliner cabin, each bolted to tracks in the floor. Photo: Kevin Dooley / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Programming from CAD is something ABB has worked on. A standard robot can sit 8 to 15 mm away from where its CAD model says it is, because of tolerances and bending under load. ABB's Absolute Accuracy option corrects this in the controller and brings the error to about 0.5 mm across the working range.

Large white ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot lifting a wide panel in a factory
Large white ABB IRB 6700 industrial robot lifting a wide panel in a factory

An ABB IRB 6700 handling a large load in a production cell. Photo: ABB

That matters for drilling and fastening, where a misplaced hole scraps the part. Heavy ABB arms such as the IRB 6700 can carry drilling heads, and RobotStudio lets engineers plan every path offline from the same CAD model the aircraft was designed in, then check it before the real robot moves.

Two engineers standing beside a large white ABB robot arm with a gripper
Two engineers standing beside a large white ABB robot arm with a gripper

Engineers with an ABB IRB 5710, a large robot for heavy handling. Photo: ABB

I expect more small mobile robots like CabinMarker to work inside cabins next to people. Airbus says swapping the pen for a camera could turn it into a corrosion scout, and since airlines fly planes for decades, inspection robots may end up just as useful as the ones that help build them.

Two women with a laptop and a tablet showing a 3D robot model next to a real ABB robot
Two women with a laptop and a tablet showing a 3D robot model next to a real ABB robot

Engineers review a robot cell design in RobotStudio before the real robot moves. Photo: ABB

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