To express nonlinear assembly sequences, a logical tree model for assembly sequences planning is proposed after analyzing the disadvantage of the existing method to generate and express of assembly sequence. Meanwhile, based on the information of the function structure tree and its parts and components of the production, the broad sense sub-assembly is identified by dividing the assembly relati...

This paper discusses a motion planning method for assembling a ring-shaped elastic part to a cylindrical part by using a dual-arm manipulator. When assembling a ring-shaped elastic part, it is important to keep the amount of elastic deformation as small as possible during the assembly task. To achieve this purpose, we show that it is effective to utilize the Covariant Hamiltonian Optimization a...

Maintainability is an important issue in design where the accessibility of certain parts is determined for routine maintenance. In the past its study has been largely manual and labor intensive. Either by using physical mockup or computer animation with CAD models of a design, the task relies on human to provide an access path for the part. In this paper, we present an automated approach to rep...

The industry asks for formal, eecient methods for tackling dynamic systems of combinatorial nature, eg. error recovery in industrial processes. As an application example, we have used a minituare assembly line that assembles toy cars|a process that has many similarities with real industrial processes. We have tried to apply one of our provably correct, polynomial-time planning algorithms to pla...

Assembly sequence planning (ASP) aims to find an optimal sequence to assemble a product. We propose here to use the ordering genetic algorithms (OGA) to solve this problem. The approach is based on three main ideas. Firstly, the identification of the subassemblies in the sequence is done by keeping trace of the components membership to a set of parts all along the sequence. Secondly, precedence...

This paper describes and analy es the most commonly used form of constraint languages for assembly planning: mating constraint languages. These constraints are typically composed of relations asserting that a certain pair of parts must be mated before some other pair of parts may be mated. However there are many significant differences between the forms of these constraints used b y different a...

W e describe the implementation and performance of Archimedes 2, an integrated mechanical assembly planning system. Archimedes 2 includes two planners, two assembly sequence animation facilities, and an associated robotic workcell. Both planners use fully 3 dimensional data. A rudimenta y translator from high level assembly plans t o control code for the robotic workcell has also been implement...

Rapid technical advances in many di erent areas of scienti c computing provide the enabling technologies for creating a comprehensive simulation and visualization environment for assembly design and planning. We have built an intelligent environment in which simple simulation tools can be composed into complex simulations for detecting potential assembly problems. Our goal in this project is to...

This paper discusses the design of a hierarchically structured process planning system for a printed circuit board assembly hne. BasIcally. the assembly system consists of a series of mdependently operatmg placement modules, connected by a carrlerless conveyor system. Both the modules and the conveyor system are fully automated, while the complete system 1s also under centrahzed computer contro...