HEURISTICS FOR ASSEMBLY SEQUENCING AND RELATIVE MAGAZINE ASSIGNMENT FOR ROBOTIC ASSEMBLY

There are three factors directly affecting robotic assembly efficiency: (i) robot motion control, (ii) the sequence for placing the individual component on the assembly board, and (iii) the corresponding magazine slot location from which the components must be selected. This paper describes an off-line heuristics to sequence the insertion orders and to assign corresponding components to a magazine so as to improve robotic assembly efficiency. The algorithms are developed for a Cartesian robot, which allows dynamic allocation of pick-and-place locations. The paper also demonstrates the operational procedures for an on-line implementation of this novel approach. The approach could be extended to assembly tasks for printed circuit boards.