Rapid response manufacturing through a rapidly recon"gurable robotic workcell

This article describes the development of a component-based technology robot workcell that can be rapidly con"gured to perform a speci"c manufacturing task. The workcell is conceived with standard and inter-operable components including actuator modules, rigid link connectors and tools that can be assembled into robots with arbitrary geometry and degrees of freedom. The recon"gurable `plug-and-playa robot kinematic and dynamic modeling algorithms are developed. These algorithms are the basis for the control and simulation of recon"gurable robots. The concept of robot con"guration optimization is introduced for the e!ective use of the rapidly recon"gurable robots. Control and communications of the workcell components are facilitated by a workcell-wide TCP/IP network and device-level CAN-bus networks. An object-oriented simulation and visualization software for the recon"gurable robot is developed based on Windows NT. Prototypes of the robot workcells con"gured to perform the light-machining task and the positioning task are constructed and demonstrated. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.