Development of reconfigurable machines

10 Abstract This paper summarizes our survey on the devel11 opment of reconfigurable machines (RMs). The goals of this 12 survey were to (i) clarify the needs and drivers to develop the 13 RMs, (ii) define the academic and practical issues involved 14 in the development of RMs, (iii) learn the state of the art of 15 the R&D on design methodologies of the RMs, and (iv) 16 identify future research directions, which benefit the manu17 facturing industries in short and long terms. The survey has 18 concluded that reconfigurable manufacturing systems 19 (RMSs) are advantageous in dealing with changes and 20 uncertainties in the ever-changing environment; while RMs 21 are essential components to implement an RMS. RMs should 22 be designed to meet a variety of task requirements via its 23 reconfigurability. It has been found that few existing RMs 24 can achieve this objective. The survey has concluded that the 25 obstacles of the development of RMs include (i) the 26 difficulties to identify and generalize design requirements 27 since an RM is application-oriented and the design require28 ments have to be defined from an actual application; and in 29 fact, some requirements are very difficult to be quantified; 30 (ii) the lacking of efficient automated robot programming 31 tools despite that the robots are essential components for 32 most of the RMs; (iii) the lack of effective technologies that 33 can be used to support system reconfigurations; (iv) no 34 international organization that serves for standardizing the 35 modular components for manufacturing and assembly 36 processes; (v) the lack of the effort in implementing a 37 heterogeneous system consisting of different types of RMs. 38 The survey has suggested some future research works to 39 overcome these obstacles.