TOWARD A SECOND-GENERATION MINIFACTORY FOR PRECISION ASSEMBLY

Manufacturers are facing increasing pressure to decrease development and deployment times for automated assembly systems for a variety of precision mechatronic products. The time and costs of integrating these systems must be significantly reduced to meet new and changing market pressures. We have previously developed an automation framework called an Architecture for Agile Assembly (AAA), and a prototype instantiation in the form of a m odular tabletop precision assembly system termed “minifactory.” In this paper, we describe components of a new second generation minifactory which embodies many of the principles developed in our research.

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