Soft automation in the form of robotics can be applied to low count production runs, variable tasks in assembly and testing and can achieve increased quality and quantity of production. These necessary abilities are due to the in-built repeatability and relative ease of adjustment and feedback. This chapter describes how, even with robotic execution of tasks, there are still considerable costs in fixed jigging and tools due to the limited dexterity of commercial arms or the cost of possible redundancy in the production of special purpose single-arm robots to carry out complex tasks. The multi-arm systems solution, described here, removes some of the limitations and peripheral costs of further application of robotics, although this is at the cost of greater complexity in intelligence, planning and control. Future developments in the areas outlined in this chapter will be the key to fully flexible automation and high technology production. Initially a description of the range of multi-arm systems is given. Then work in enabling research which is required for multi-armed systems is outlined. This is followed by details of research at the Queen's University of Belfast into task planning, path planning and collision detection, multi-arm sensing, hardware architectures for practical implementation and maintenance of reliability.

Inspec keywords: robotic assembly; collision avoidance; industrial manipulators; testing

Other keywords: path planning; soft automation; multi arm sensing; collision detection; production quantity; multiple manipulator; assembly; cooperant behaviour; special purpose single arm robots; robotics; robotic tasks execution; task planning; production quality; testing

Subjects: Manipulators