Multi-robot manipulation and maintenance for fault-tolerant systems

Ensuring fault tolerance of robotic systems is a challenge for factory automation. This paper focuses on multi robot manipulation and maintenance for fault-tolerant systems. For this purpose, a manipulation strategy of multiple mobile robots, that enables a system to continue operating even if a working robot undergoes preventive maintenance or fails and undergoes corrective maintenance, is implemented. In addition, a robot failure and a maintenance policy for preventive and corrective maintenance activities are mathematically modeled on the basis of reliability engineering. Thus, working robots are allowed to undergo preventive maintenance at an optimal interval and corrective maintenance each time they fail. Finally, through simulation experiments, the effectiveness of an integrated multi-robot manipulation and maintenance in industrial applications is shown.