A new software environment for design of automated workcells

Abstract

The authors present the automatic system configurator (ASC), a software environment for the design of automated workcells. ASC consists of a number of tools which provide support at various stages of the planning of complex machine tools and workcells. It contains three tools for configuration and one layout planning tool. The tools can be used and stand-alone basis or in an integrated fashion via an information management system. Each ASC tool is a contribution to CIM in its own right. The configuration tools are knowledge based and stress in particular the knowledge acquisition aspects. The layout planning can be fully automatic, taking into account kinematic aspects for the layout planning of robots cells.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>