Development of a robotic system which assists unmanned production based oncooperation between off-line robots and on-line robots: Concept, analysis and related technology

In order to deal with labour shortages due to the predicted low birth rate in the 21st century and create a more friendly production system, we propos e a robotic system which assists production in flexible manufacturing envir onments. In this robotic system off-line robots are proposed to replace or reduce the need for human workers at the shop-floor. The off-line robots ea rn, out assisting or service tasks for the on-line robots which perform man ufacturing tasks at the production line or site. In this paper first, an an alysis of a conventional automatic production system using robots is descri bed. Secondly, the concept of a robotic production system using two types o f robots is proposed. Thirdly, a methodology for the realisation of the pro posed concept and same technical results are presented. Finally, fault reco very using off-line robots and peripheral technology are discussed.