Incremental Design of a Flexible Robotic Assembly Cell Using Reactive Robots

Abstract

In this paper we advocate the use of reactive robots for incremental design of flexible robotic assembly cells. To this end, we propose a layered reactive architecture for assembly robots which is shown to have many desirable properties such as robustness, reactivity and incrementality. We then describe a series of successive simulation experiments to validate our incremental design choices for the assembly cell. Those choices are shown to translate to smooth modifications to the basic architecture, and is each an attempt to improve the overall cell’s performance. This gives rise to a number of interesting observations, namely the existence of non multiplicative factors, and the stabilising impact of the use of simple adaptive components. We thus proceed naturally from the more primitive robot to the adaptive one, hoping to gain some insight into the parameters that determine the performance of a cell and must be used to drive its design.