A VIRTUAL SENSOR IMPLEMENTATION FOR A FLEXIBLE ASSEMBLY MACHINE

We describe a sensor integration system which we have designed and imp lemented for a large fully-integrated flexible assembly machine. The m achine was developed by a consortium to explore the design and impleme ntation issues involved. The sensor integration system was designed fo r execution on a multiple transputer architecture, and co-ordinates al l the sensory information in the machine. It uses the concept of virtu al sensing to provide sensory data at an appropriate level of abstract ion to the machine supervisor, which controls execution of the assembl y tasks.