Automated assembly with compliant mating parts

Deals with planning assembly processes for a manipulator using numerical simulations. The dynamical model of the robot includes elasticity, damping, friction and backlash in the joints. In addition several models of typical mounting processes are used to calculate the forces and torques acting on the gripper during the assembly task. In this paper the authors specifically present the modelling of elastic rings, typically made of rubber, mounted on a piston for the insertion into a hole, whose walls may contain notches. The nonlinear and unsteady forces acting during the mounting process are then evaluated. The influence on the manipulator is regarded via the coupling of the authors´ process model with the dynamic robot model. This approach is then verified experimentally