A concept for isles of automation: Ubiquitous robot cell for flexible manufacturing

Abstract

In this paper, we present a concept for short series production using industrial robots and advanced control systems. We call and define this system as ldquoisles of automationrdquo. The concept is beyond the current robot workcells by the properties of flexibility, reconfigurability, context awareness and programmability. In the concept, there are modules defined for programming, sensing, material handling and flow as well as communication. The overall architecture defines how these modules are working together. In this paper, we present these modules and illustrate the operation in the pilot case.