Flexible robot-assembly using a multi-sensory approach

Recent research in industrial robotics aims at the involvement of additional sensoric devices to improve robustness, flexibility and performance of common robot applications. Many different sensors have been developed over the past years to fit the requirements of different but very specific tasks. Special seam tracking sensors support the robot in welding applications. Vision systems are common in quality control and inspection. Force/torque sensors mounted to a robot’s wrist are still an exception and limited to the fields of scientific research. Compared to the number of annual robot sales the number of sensor equipped robots is still negligible, although the benefits of sensoric feedback are obvious. In this paper we introduce a general approach to tackle the problem of sensor-based robot assembly. We realized a flexible assembly cell that includes a variety of different sensors for mating with moving parts.