Assembly Sequence Planning for Multiple Robots Along a Conveyer Line

다수의 로봇을 이용한 컨베어상의 조립순서 계획

In order to increase productivity of an assembly system composed of multiple robots along a conveyer line, an efficient sequence planning is necessary because the assembly time is dependent upon the assembly sequence. In this paper, a two-robot assembly system is considered in which two robots operate simultaneously and transfer parts from the part feeders to the workpiece on the conveyer one by one. In this case, the distance from the feeder to the workpiece varies with time because the workpiece moves at a constant speed on the conveyer. Hence, the sequence programming is not a trivial problem. Also, the two robots may interfere with each other kinematically and dynamically due to the simultaneous operation, so the sequence should be programmed to avoid the interferences. In this paper, the task sequence optimization problem is formulated and is solved by employing the simulated annealing which has been shown to be effective for solving large combinatorial optimizations.