Meet the Giant Robot That Builds Boeing’s Airplane Wings

This is PAL.

He's the friendly sort of giant robot.

This 20 foot tall machine helps make flight possible.

You know when you're on an airplane and you look

out of the window and you think to yourself,

all that's keeping me in the air here is some clever

aerodynamics over that equally clever wing?

Well, if you're on a 737, this is where

those wings are made.

Wings end up beautifully complex, but they start

very simply.

They're hollow; they're like a piece of corrugated

cardboard, or maybe a wall in your house.

There's a top and bottom sheet, and then ribs, or struts,

between them.

The void in the middle is actually the fuel tank,

so everything has to be joined together perfectly.

What this line does, it builds our upper and lower

wing panels that build up our wing blocks on our

737 wing.

At the rates we're at right now, we install 44,000

fasteners a day.

We're building 42 airplanes a month right now, so it's

two sets of right and left hand every single day.

[Jack] And that is where good old PAL comes in.

The panel assembly line is a robotic update to the

age-old process of clamping, drilling, and then riveting

wings together by hand.

In our legacy line, it's been around since the 1960's.

In the new assembly line, we have about 90% of the

fasteners are installed by the machine.

[Jack] It's a lot easier on the workers now, they don't

have to practice their yoga to reach the furthest corners

or risk repetitive strain injuries.

Nine PAL machines in total will allow Boeing to build wings

in a continuous flow, twice as fast as it used to.

Lasers guide the machine for maximum precision when

joining wing panels together with fasteners.

It can follow the panel's curvature.

But it's the scale here that's really impressive.

When you're building a 737, with a total wingspan

of over a hundred feet, it really helps to have some

pretty big friends on your side.