Agent-oriented and distributed assembly task planning for multiple manipulators

Generally, algorithms for assembly task planning are apt to become complicated. Moreover, it is very difficult to create plans for multiple manipulators, because complicated tasks to divide an obtained plan into some subtasks and allocate them to each manipulator have to be executed. We propose a new assembly task planning system for multiple manipulators in order to avoid these complicated problems and improve the feasibility and the reliability of the whole system. In this system, each of parts composing a machine as regarded as an agent, and a plan for an assembly task is automatically generated as results of autonomous behaviors of these agents. The outline of the planning system based on this concept is described, some simulation results using a cooperative computational model are given