AN INTELLIGENT KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR ROBOTIC CELL DESIGN

As research fields in Al accelerate and a greater number of experts ar e demanded by industry, Expert y tem play an important role in meeting the technological sophistication required in today's competitive worl d. Industries are demanding the assistance of human experts for solvin g complicated problems. However, ther is a shortage of experts due to this demand. Expert Systems are rapidly becoming one of the major appr oaches to solve engineering and manufacturing problems. They have been implemented for several practical applications in many decision makin g problems. Expert Systems are helping major companies to diagnose pro cesses in real time, schedule operations, maintain machinery and to de sign service and production facilities. Robots are an integral part of today's manufacturing environment. New tasks are being defined for ro bots in order to meet the challenges of Flexible Manufacturing Systems . Along with this growth ther is an increasing variety of robots to ch oose from. One of the major problems facing the potential robot user w ill be his/her choice of an optimum robot for a particular task. Vario us parameters should be considered and the use should choose an indust rial robot whose characteristics satisfy the requirements of the inten ded task. This paper will present a solution to the problem of selecti ng an optimum robot by building a Knowledge-Based Expert System. It us es the knowledge base and the rules to detemine an optimum robot.