Atlas: An Automatic Assembly Sequencing and Fixturing System

We present a method to generate automatically both an assembly sequence and a xture to hold all the intermediate subassemblies, given only a geometric description of the product. The main contribution here is that the sequence and xture are generated concurrently rather than sequentially, unlike in previous assembly-planning work. Also, the representation of possible xturing locations is more complete. This method has been implemented for the planar case, and we present experimental results below. We also discuss some of the key issues involved in the concurrent design of assembly sequences and xtures. The long-term vision for this work is a CAD tool which can provide immediate feedback to a product designer about the ease of assembling the proposed product.