Cooperation requirement planning for multi-robot assembly cells

Abstract

Cooperation among machines is deemed an essential attribute of intelligent manufacturing and assembly systems. It improves the flexibility and reliability of such systems. The nature of task cooperation among machines can be of three types: Mandatory, Optional, and Concurrent. Cooperation Requirement Planning (CRP) for multi-robot assembly cells is divided into two steps: (1) CRP-I involving the mapping of geometric, physical, and operational information of an assembly to the corresponding capabilities of the robots, and generating assembly, robot and cell constraints, and (2) CRP-II involving the assignment of tasks to single robots and multi-robot sets based on their capabilities, and generating a consistent and coordinated global plan. CRP is an integrated assembly and cooperation task planning methodology that provides greater planning flexibility than that achieved by performing assembly and task planning independently. A prototype implementation of the CRP I methodology has been developed using the ROBCAD$\sp{\rm TM}$Open Systems Environment on a Silicon Graphics IRIS 4D/80GT graphics workstation.