CATEC recently participated in the completion of the VENTURI project, an initiative co-financed by the European Union (Next Generation Funds) and the Spanish Government (Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, PRTR), in which our technology centre collaborated with a consortium formed by the companies Integración Tecnológica Empresarial (ITE), Surcontrol and IOVI – Intelligent Vision.

The aim of this project was to develop advanced solutions for the automation of critical processes in aeronautical manufacturing and to improve the efficiency of aircraft aerodynamic contours, especially in critical areas where discontinuities occur in the assembly, known as Step & Gap, which directly affect laminar flow and cause friction, noise and increased energy consumption.

In this way, VENTURI has made it possible to digitise, automate and make aircraft production safer, as well as more efficient and sustainable, and to develop:

  • Sensory and collaborative robotics solutions for automating Step & Gap measurement.
  • Artificial vision applied to intelligent sealant dosing.
  • Augmented reality for automated verification of geometry and tolerances in critical parts.
  • IoT and industrial cyberconnectivity technologies aimed at securing data generated in the plant.
  • Digital twins to simulate and validate laminar flow behaviour in different design and production phases.

CATEC has acted as the main cross-cutting technology partner, providing infrastructure and capabilities to support the consortium companies in their respective technological challenges, directly involved in technical execution and experimental validation.

Our main functions have focused on four key areas:

  • Robotics and Advanced Automation: Collaboration in the design of autonomous movement systems to ensure that the robotic system can interact with large aeronautical structures with stability and precision, without the need for excessive counterweights.
  • Integration and Experimentation: Design and construction at our secure experimentation laboratory facilities, where we have worked on the final integration of the subcomponents: robots, final inspection and dosing effector, and Digital Twin.
  • Validation: To ensure the reliability of the new inspection systems, we have contributed developments to validate the Step & Gap measurements and sealant bead defectology carried out by the prototypes.
  • Connectivity and Digital Twin: Support for the interconnection between the physical environment (robots, sensors) and the virtual environment (Digital Twin and Augmented Reality), facilitating the flow of information necessary for industrial data security.

The main novelty of the VENTURI project has been that it has addressed a major technological challenge in the aeronautical sector: manual assembly, Step & Gap measurement and sealant application, through a comprehensive automated solution, with the main innovation being the convergence of disruptive technologies to achieve a more efficient aircraft.

Although the project has concluded with the validation of the prototype, the partners are actively working on a roadmap to take these results and the technological maturity achieved from the current prototype to an industrialised solution that can reach the current aeronautical market, a marketable TRL (Technology Readiness Level) that can be applied in real industrial environments.

Photo: Image of a project milestone validation day held at the CATEC facilities.