Mobile Manufacturing of Large Structures - Robotics Institute Carnegie Mellon University

Mobile Manufacturing of Large Structures

Conference Paper, Proceedings of (ICRA) International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1565 - 1572, May, 2015

Abstract

Assembly of large structures requires large fixtures, often referred to as monuments. Their cost and massive size limit flexibility and scalability of the manufacturing process. Numerous small mobile robots can replace these large structures and, therefore, replicate the efficiency of the assembly line with far more flexibility. An assembly line made up of mobile manipulators can easily and rapidly be reconfigured to support scalability and a varied product mix, while allowing for near optimal resource assignment. The challenge to using small robots in place of monuments is making their joint behavior precise enough to accomplish the task and efficient enough to execute subtasks in a reasonable period of time. In this paper, we describe a set of techniques that we combine to achieve the necessary precision and overall efficiency to build a large structure. We describe and demonstrate these techniques in the context of a testbed we implemented for assembling a wing ladder.

BibTeX

@conference{Bourne-2015-5966,
author = {David Bourne and Howie Choset and Humphrey Hu and George A. Kantor and Christopher Niessl and Zack Rubinstein and Reid Simmons and Stephen Smith},
title = {Mobile Manufacturing of Large Structures},
booktitle = {Proceedings of (ICRA) International Conference on Robotics and Automation},
year = {2015},
month = {May},
pages = {1565 - 1572},
}