Design of a flexible robot assembly demo system

In this paper, a flexible robot assembly system designed for demonstrating advanced technologies, such as CAD/CAM, flexible assembly systems (FAS) and material management technology in CIMS is introduced. On the basis of a principle embodying flexibility of manufacturing and assembly, a system that can assemble two different kinds of products without any modification is designed. The system is composed of a CAD subsystem, mini 3D storage, a sculptor subsystem and one flexible robot assembly subsystem. Products to be assembled and assembly sequences are designed elaborately. The main equipment of the robot assembly subsystem such as the assembly robot, screw-on robot and conveyor are introduced and the design of an end hand and assembly worktable is discussed in detail. A distributed control mode is adopted in the system. Flow of software including material flow and information flow is described. Assembly experiments of automobile models show that the assembly line can complete assembling a product in three to five minutes.