Automated assembly of a motor-pump using an RCC device

Abstract

Robots are being applied to a wide variety of industrial processes such as welding, painting, machine loading, grinding, and assembly, amongst others. Tradition ally all these processes have been accomplished by people often using hand held tools. For some operations, merely attaching those tools to the end of a robot has been sufficient. But it has been shown many times in many fields that true automation of a previously manual operation requires considerable study to understand the process itself. People and robots have different, sometimes complementary, strengths and weaknesses. This means that truly intelligent and efficient robot automation requires that the target process be understood enough to ensure the best use of robots. This is particularly true in the case of assembly. The situation can be deceptive because it is so often assumed that robots can do all that people do, or soon will be able to do. Assembly appears particularly easy to accomplish. A lot of research was carried out to know what people do when they fit two parts together, and this was considered necessary in order to create robot assembly. In fact what people do may be irrelevant. The important thing is to consider what the parts need in order to fit together easily and reliably, and then to consider how to equip a robot to satisfy those needs. The goal of this thesis is to analyse rigid part mating, i.e., the assembly of parts that do not deform substantially during assembly, and to put the results into practice [...].