Abstract
Flexible manufacturing work cells provide excellent opportunities for enhancing both efficiency and productivity in an automated manufacturing environment. Such cells typically integrate robots, a wide variety of machine tools, material handling equipment, packaging devices, sensors, actuators, controllers, and similar other hardware. The coordinated control of robots in flexible manufacturing work cells presents a particularly challenging problem since it has to respond to a need for adaptability for product change and minimization of online setup time and costs. The major emphasis of this paper is on machine tools and related hardware operating in flexible manufacturing work cells. It includes a discussion of motivation for flexible automation, past problems and recent advances, and guidelines for work cell design. Problems associated with complicated automated manufacturing applications are presented and their potential solutions are identified, An illustrative design example of a flexible manufacturing work cell is given that integrates component loading devices, several cooperating manipulators, conveyors, inspection stations, and a variety of machine tools.
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