Error recovery strategies for electronic connectors mating in robotic fault-tolerant assembly system

Mating of electronic connectors is an indispensable process for assembling electrical elements in wiring harness manufacturing system. This paper presents error recovery strategies for electronic connectors mating assembly with uncertain position. In this system, there is no visual assistance but only a force sensor is used to recognize errors during mating. A tilt strategy for error recovery method is also proposed to guide the connecter assembly, and corresponding search strategies are proposed for fault detection and diagnosis and recovering errors raised in connector mating. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed strategies is able to diagnose the position errors within the assembly process accurately, and realize error recovery effectively.