Design and Development of a Tabletop Precision Assembly System

Abstract

We describe design elements and their interactions for a tabletop-size precision microassembly system called mini- factory. The system is a proper subset of the Agile Assembly Architecture which includes capabilities for rapidly producing modular virtual factories and configuring their real counterparts. Minifactory is a distributed collection of cooperating intelli- gent robotic agents that perform microassembly and related operations. For example, we have demonstrated both precision vision-guided and force-guided assembly between cooperating agents. This paper sketches our general approach, focusses on the hardware aspects of minifactory, and discusses the current state of development.