ROBOTIC SYSTEMS PROBABILISTIC ANALYSIS

This paper presents probabilistic analysis of a system comprised of a robot and its associated safety mechanism. The system can have various modes of failures and is repaired upon failure. The system failure ra tes other than the common-cause failure rate are assumed constant and the failed system repair times are assumed arbitrarily distributed. Th ree techniques are combined to perform analysis: Markov, the device of stages method, and the supplementary variable approach. Expressions a long with plots for the robot system availability and state probabilit ies are presented. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd