Utilization of motion planning strategies for micro-optical assembly

The assembly of micro-optics is an upcoming field for automation and robotics, since laser manufacturers start to look closer into automated solutions in order to meet the developing requirements on precision and productivity. But due to a surprising lack of automation and accompanying model- and simulation-based toolchains in this industrial sector so far, our target group are laser experts and optics experts who do not have any background in programming robots yet. Hence automation in micro-optical assembly strongly and newly benefits from tools well-established in other sectors, such as 3d simulation, visual programming and motion planning. In our contribution, we first describe characteristic problems and approaches in micro-optical assembly, with a glance at process development and hardware setups. We then concentrate on the selection and utilization of the “Open Motion Planning Library” [OMPL] to provide motion planning strategies for our 3d simulation-based IDE (“Integrated Development Environment”) for programming micro-optical assembly processes. Finally, we demonstrate the potentials of such an automated motion planning support for process developers.