Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 March 2009
We describe a sensor integration system which we have designed and implemented for a large fully-integrated flexible assembly machine. The machine was developed by a consortium to explore the design and implementation issues involved. The sensor integration system was designed for execution on a multiple transputer architecture, and co-ordinates all the sensory information in the machine. It uses the concept of virtual sensing to provide sensory data at an appropriate level of abstraction to the machine supervisor, which controls execution of the assembly tasks.