On-line knowledge acquisition and enhancement in robotic assembly tasks

Abstract

Industrial robots are reliable machines for manufacturing tasks such as welding, panting, assembly, palletizing or kitting operations. They are traditionally programmed by an operator using a teach pendant in a point-to-point scheme with limited sensing capabilities such as industrial vision systems and force/torque sensing. The use of these sensing capabilities is associated to the particular robot controller, operative systems and programming language. Today, robots can react to environment changes specific to their task domain but are still unable to learn skills to effectively use their current knowledge. The need for such a skill in unstructured environments where knowledge can be acquired and enhanced is desirable so that robots can effectively interact in multimodal real-world scenarios. In this article we present a multimodal assembly controller (MAC) approach to embed and effectively enhance knowledge into industrial robots working in multimodal manufacturing scenarios such as assembly during kitting operations with varying shapes and tolerances. During learning, the robot uses its vision and force capabilities resembling a human operator carrying out the same operation. The approach consists of using a MAC based on the Fuzzy ARTMAP artificial neural network in conjunction with a knowledge base. The robot starts the operation having limited initial knowledge about what task it has to accomplish. During the operation, the robot learns the skill for recognising assembly parts and how to assemble them. The skill acquisition is evaluated by counting the steps to complete the assembly, length of the followed assembly path and compliant behaviour. The performance improves with time so that the robot becomes an expert demonstrated by the assembly of a kit with different part geometries. The kit is unknown by the robot at the beginning of the operation; therefore, the kit type, location and orientation are unknown as well as the parts to be assembled since they are randomly fed by a conveyor belt.