Agility Metrics in the ARIAC Competition.

A thriving manufacturing sector is the essential heart of a vibrant and balanced economy in the United States (U.S.). Small and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) constitute an important sector in the U.S. manufacturing but they are currently facing increasing competition due to economic globalization. To survive and thrive in this highly competitive environment, SMMs have to rely on automation and robotics, which bring with them a whole series of techniques to improve the quality and productivity of a manufacturing process. However, robotic systems need to be agile for them to be useful to SMMs so they can offer more automated customization of high-mix/low-volume production. This paper focuses mainly on the metrics used in the Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition (ARIAC). The goal of the competition along with its associated metrics is to promote advances in research by assessing the performance of industrial robotic systems in manufacturing settings.