The level of care and organization in this photo feels equivalent to what I would expect for a ground robot prototype out of a startup. Can any aerospace engineer comment on what they see? Does their setup inspire confidence?
It looks normal. Our shop (assembly line building full aircraft from material stock, 2 football fields long) was like that except most of the workers were filipino or hispanic, wearing street clothes. When they filmed a TV commercial there, they brought in actors wearing red jumpsuits to scurry around as technicians. Because like you, that is what the public expects.
I've seen many of Boeing's wing assembly lines and there are a lot of similarities here, except that this is clearly not set up for mass production. (Which makes sense for a demonstrator.)
Also from the startup ground robot prototypes I've seen (and made) this looks much neater and more planned out than what's normal.
I noticed that too. I loved the caption on the second photo: "The closeout process is relatively simple, yet requires the highest level of precision possible." LOL. If you look at the picture, one guy is moving a chunk of rough cut lumber, another guy seems to be eyeballing it, there's stacks of plywood sitting there, hand clamps with wooden shims, wires dangling and a bunch of strips of tape with hand written arrows on it.
I'm sure it's all very highly technical work, but that caption and photo was hysterical.
