Development of a manufacturing workcell management system

A flexible automatic workcell management system is described. This system has significant problem-solving capability. From the descriptive user input, it is able to generate a feasible solution and automatically carry out its execution. Such built-in intelligence may eliminate the need for the user to have intimate technical knowledge of each individual device in order to operate the workcell. Once the user has provided the required information i.e. world model, task commands, and error recovery, no human intervention is required throughout the manufacturing process because, under normal operating conditions, the system's error recovery mechanisms anticipate and automatically deal with errors that are within the domain specified by the user. Operator assistance is needed only when the events are beyond the cell supervisor's error handling capability. Instead of trying to create a system totally relying on machine intelligence, this approach utilizes both the high-level decision-making capability of a human operator and the low-level implementation of machine intelligence to develop a system which is intelligent yet feasible for immediate practical implementation, with enough flexibility to allow expansion and upgrading and thus to become a fully mature intelligent system.<<ETX>>