Simulation-Based Planning of Robot Tasks in Flexible Manufacturing

A framework is proposed for support of design, task planning, and simulation of automated manufacturing systems. The framework establishes a hierarchy of method banks essential for improving the efficiency and cost effectiveness of manufacturing processes. The methods should support automatic generation of sequencing rules, design and configuration of the manufacturing facility and equipment, synthesis of task oriented robot programs, and generation and execution of simulation models of a manufacturing system. In this paper, each layer is addressed and preliminary results that apply simulation to interpret and test task oriented robot programs are discussed.