AND/OR GRAPH REPRESENTATION OF ASSEMBLY PI.ANS*

This paper presents a compact representation of all possible as-sembly plans of a given product using AND/OR graphs. Such a representation forms the basis for efficient planning algorithms which enable an increase in assembly system flexibility by allowing an intcl-ligcnt robot to pick a course of action according to instantaneous conditions, Two applications are discussed: the selection of the best assembly plan (off-line planning), and opportunistic scheduling (on-line planning). An example of an assembly with four parts illustrates the use of the AND/OR graph representation to find the best assembly plan based on weighing of operations according to complexity of manipulation and stability of subassemblies. In practice, a generic search algorithm, such as the AO * may be used to find this plan. The scheduling efficiency using this representation is compared to fixed sequence and precedence graph reprcscntations. The AND/OR graph consistently reduces the average number of operations