AN EXPERT SYSTEM-BASED DESIGN OF SCARA ROBOT

This paper presents an expert system-based approach for designing a SC ARA robot. SCARA is an acronym for Selective Compliance Arm for Roboti c Assembly. Robot designing is a complicated and iterative process, re quiring highly skilled designers. Because of its iterative nature, rob ot design also proves to be a tedious task for the design experts. To solve this problem, an expert system has been designed which takes up the job of a designer in the iterative design of robots. The expert sy stem, with the help of its knowledge base, carries out the static and dynamic analysis, and arrives at the dimensions of the individual part s of the robot. During the iterative design process, the expert system also ensures that any change in a component is also reflected on the components linked to it so the compatibility of the components is not lost. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.