RoboCIM: Towards a Domain Model for Industrial Robot System Configurators

Determining which components are required for a system configuration, and whether they are compatible, can be a difficult task, especially in an industry with significant amounts of information that resides within a group of experts. In this paper we illustrate some of the main challenges we and our industrial partner (Technicon) face when configuring a robot system (typically consisting of a robotic arm, end effector, coupling device, and a base) and present our domain model, Robot System Configurator Information Model (RoboCIM). We formalise the model within a defeasible reasoning framework, in order to explicitly capture cases where information is missing or is obtained from the system integrators’ experience. We provide a prototype implementation of the framework in ASP and evaluate it on a subset of components from Technicon’s component catalogue, illustrating the feasibility of the configurator.