Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2009
The consideration of part motion instability is crucial to the determination of assembly sequence since this affects the complexity of fixtures and dexterity of robots. This paper presents a new approach to the inference of robotic assembly sequences, taking into consideration the instability of base assembly motions. Based upon the evaluation of motion instability, the method generates stable assembly sequences by use of the precedence constraint inference method previously developed by the authors. An example assembly of a 10-part electrical relay is given to illustrate the concepts and procedure of the proposed scheme. The results show that the proposed method can be effectively utilized to generate stable assembly sequences, thus providing crucial information on the fixture design and selection of types of assembly robots.