Abstract:There are some important thin-walled rotary composite components in aero-engine, the manufacturing and assembly process of which include positioning, drilling-riveting, glue coating and other processes. The positioning efficiency and accuracy are related to the production capacity and assembly quality. In order to improve assembly quality and efficiency, the authors have developed a positioning system for the automatic assembly of the composite components which applies a 4-DOF manipulator based on RV transmission. It is proven to realize the automatic grasping and highprecision positioning of the composite components, as well as to solve the problem of low accuracy and efficiency of the manual posture alignment in the assembly of the composite components. This article could establish the foundation for further realizing the intelligent manufacturing of the aero-engine composite components.