Intelligent synchronized robot conveyor system

A robot/conveyor system is an important part of the manufacturing system. A s such, the robot/conveyor system must comply with all the requirements of a modern manufacturing system: high flexibility, high efficiency, and smart reasoning processes to lead the system to its next status based on its cur rent status and varied inputs. An expert system consisting of a knowledge b ase and an inference engine was developed to operate and control a robot/co nveyor system. A large variety of robot/conveyor system runs were performed to explore the efficiency of its operations. These system runs explore all the parameters associated with robot/conveyor system operations: manipulat ors specifications and velocities, pick-up methods, types of arriving parts , their locations, and orientations. The performed runs verified a well-kno wn fact that a robot/conveyor system based on variable pick-up locations is more efficient than a robot/conveyor system based on a single, predefined, and unchanged pick-up location. The implementations of the variable pick-u p locations method is associated with the need to implement real-time compl icated software algorithms to track the arriving parts and to synchronize t heir maneuvers with the conveyor belt. Therefore, the implementation of var iable pick-up locations method must be performed only when they result in m ost significant benefits. The system runs show that the benefits of the var iable pick-up locations approach are inversely related to manipulations' ve locities. If the variable pick-up location method is incorporated with effi cient and reliable tracking algorithms, most efficient robot/conveyor syste ms will be resulted. Therefore, future efforts should address the advance o f tracking algorithms of arriving parts, thus improving the synchronization of these parts with manipulator's maneuver, in order to achieve the most e fficient robot/conveyor system. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.