Assembly research and manipulation

The current research issues in assembly being explored world wide will be discussed. The work falls under two main headings namely, a) parts mating science-the study of the phenomena which occurs when parts interact during the assembly process, the kind of information available, its quality, etc. b) programmable assembly system - the study of economic machines which can be applied to batch manufacturing under conditions of model mix, design change or rapid evolution or obsolensence of the product. A system which has the capability of being taught a new task rather than being built specifically to do the task. Exploration of the parts mating question requires investigation into geometric, force-friction, and logical test characteristics of the mating process involving the generation of and the carrying out of very precise experiments to examine hypothesis. Programmability issues include the analysis of manufactured products to determine kinds of tasks, statistics of their occurence and geometric requirements on the placing and alignment of parts; and the general economic modeling and comparison of manual assembly, assembly by special machines, and assembly by programmable machines.