Robot assembly: an architecture to promote autonomy

Controlling and programming assembly robots to perform arbitrary tasks of manipulation even in well-structured environments has proved to be a difficult problem. Architectural designs of control systems associated with the robot and its environment can be important factors in providing the basic robustness needed for autonomous system behaviour. This paper presents the basic features of a modular parallel processing architecture for robotic assembly, which aims to impart more efficiency, robustness, and-in case of failure-graceful degradation in robot actions