Robotized assembly of a wire harness in car production line

This paper addresses an engineering attempt of utilizing multiple robot arms in assemblies of deformable parts. The developed robot system simulates a practically existing assembly process in an automobile plant where wrapped cables (wire harness) have to be fixed on the body of a car. This operation has been performed by skilled workers and is considered to be difficult for automatization. During the development of the system, solutions are proposed for various engineering problems confronted. The problems are all due to the deformable properties of a wire harness. Many of them are general for other operations involved with deformable objects. The proposed methods in the research are verified by a successful demonstration of wire harness assembly under a condition similar to a real plant.