Jason Ford, news editor

The Paris Air Show launches next week with business appearing to be brisk for UK companies supplying the aerospace sector.

Trade body ADS announced on 30 May, 2017 that the worldwide backlog of aircraft orders stands at over 13,300, which is the fifth highest level recorded. So far this year, companies have delivered 406 aircraft, which has an estimated value of 8bn to UK industry. Of this figure, 5.5bn is attributed to deliveries of 109 wide-body aircraft and 2.5bn to single-aisle aircraft.

More normally associated with Everett, north of Seattle in Washington State, Boeing today reiterated its contribution to the UK economy with figures that show a tripling of direct spending with UK suppliers to 2.1bn over the past six years. According to Boeing, this has helped to support around 16,500 jobs, which increased by 80 per cent over the same period.

Furthermore, the companys payroll includes 2,200 employees in the UK who are supporting local airline, military and security customers.

Boeing continues to find significant talent and supply chain capability, a strong market and world-class partners in the UK, said Sir Michael Arthur, president of Boeing Europe and managing director of Boeing UK and Ireland.

Earlier in the year The Engineer reported on Boeings plans to open its first manufacturing plant in Europe with a facility in Sheffield that will produce trailing-edge actuation systems for Next-Generation 737, 737 MAX and 777 aircraft.

The 20m investment by Boeing is part of broader plans to for the US aviation giant to begin in-house manufacturing of actuation components and systems in the US and Britain.

Whilst not leaving aerospace OEMs hamstrung, there are elements within production processes that that would benefit from the help of robotic tools, such as in riveting, which can have detrimental physical effects on the people performing the job.

To this end, Boeing has introduced FAUB (Fuselage Automated Upright Build) on its 777 line in Everett.

Meanwhile, Airbus is also no stranger to robotic systems, as research investigating the feasibility of co-robotic systems (co-bots) has shown, a situation reflected at Ford Motor Company, where co-bots are being assessed across a range of assembly line tasks.

More broadly, a report from Markets and Markets shows that the aerospace robotics market is projected to grow from $1.81bn in 2016 to $4.54bn by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 16.55 per cent. Increasing use of robots for efficient aircraft production, growing use of robotics to handle aircraft order backlogs, and increasing labour costs are factors identified in the report as driving the aerospace robotics market.

The 52nd Paris Air Show will take place at the Le Bourget Parc des Expositions from19 to 25 June 2017. Following Paris, UK Robotics Week starts on 24 June, with robotics and autonomous systems taking centre stage.

As well as celebrating Britains strengths in robotics and autonomous systems, the event will seek to engage the nations schools, colleges and universities in developing the digital skills needed to drive the UKs future economy.

In his piece titled UK must rise to robotics and AI challenge (link below), Prof Guang-Zhong Yang, Chair of the EPSRC UK-Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) Network, discusses UK Robotics Week, and the significance of robotics and AI innovation in the governments recently announced Industrial Strategy.

According to Prof Yang, Robotics Week will feature four Challenges:

More on these challenges and importance of robotics and RAS to the UK economy can be found at UK must rise to robotics and AI challenge

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Aerospace looks to robotic systems as orders backlog grows - The Engineer