Modeling Reusable, Platform-Independent Robot Assembly Processes
This work addresses the need for easy programming of compliant robots in smart factories for flexible production, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing concepts of domain-specific languages and modular design.
The authors tackled the problem of programming flexible robots for individualized assembly tasks by proposing a domain-specific language and toolchain called LightRocks, which enables modeling assembly processes at different abstraction levels to separate concerns between domain and robotics experts, resulting in reusable and platform-independent assembly plans.
Smart factories that allow flexible production of highly individualized goods require flexible robots, usable in efficient assembly lines. Compliant robots can work safely in shared environments with domain experts, who have to program such robots easily for arbitrary tasks. We propose a new domain-specific language and toolchain for robot assembly tasks for compliant manipulators. With the LightRocks toolchain, assembly tasks are modeled on different levels of abstraction, allowing a separation of concerns between domain experts and robotics experts: externally provided, platform-independent assembly plans are instantiated by the domain experts using models of processes and tasks. Tasks are comprised of skills, which combine platform-specific action models provided by robotics experts. Thereby it supports a flexible production and re-use of modeling artifacts for various assembly processes.