Algorithms for Fixture Design

Manufacturing and assembly processes often require objects to be held in such a way that they can resist all external wrenches. The problem of " xture planning" is to compute, for a given object and a set of xturing elements, the set of placements of the xturing elements that constrain all nite and in nitesimal motions of the object (due to applied wrenches). As xturing problems occur frequently in manufacturing and assembly, it becomes costly to build a dedicated xturing solution for each di erent problem. Modular xturing toolkits o er the advantage of reusability of the xturing elements and have therefore gained considerable popularity. A modular xturing toolkit consists of a xturing table with a rectangular grid of holes, and a set of xturing elements whose positions are restricted to the holes in the table. Several recent publications in the eld of xture planning aim at exploring the power of these modular xturing toolkits. We give an overview of modular and non-modular xture planning for various types of objects and sets of xturing elements.