Generation of robotic assembly sequences using a simulated annealing

An assembly sequence is considered to be optimal when it minimizes assembly cost while satisfying assembly constraints. The assembly cost relates to assembly operations, assembly motions, and assembly direction changes. This study proposes a simulated-annealing method for the generation of such assembly sequences in robotic assembly. This method reflects the assembly cost to an energy function associated with the assembly sequence. The energy function is iteratively minimized and occasionally perturbed by a simulated annealing until no further change in the energy occurs. As a result, an assembly sequence with a low assembly cost is finally found. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method, case study is presented for an electrical relay. The performance is evaluated from the comparison of the result with the ones obtained from an expert system and a neural network-based approach, previously presented methods.