Development of a Flexible and Agile Multi-Robot Manufacturing System

In this paper, we address a fluctuating low-volume and high-mix manufacturing system that handles a large variety of products. The incoming products have their own task information imposed by customer demands. In other words, they are not given in advance. Consequently, the system-operating conditions vary with the changes in the given tasks over time. Because of such unpredictable fluctuations, the system might have localized heavy workloads. Therefore, workload balancing is a challenge. For this issue, we focus on multi-robots in a manufacturing system. We first describe behavioral and cooperation mechanisms among robots. Thus, by sharing their information, robots are able to respond to such dynamically changing situations reactively. We then develop a flexible and agile multi-robot manufacturing system with Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and product-processing robots. Finally, we discuss the validity of the developed system.