Maintenance Automation: Methods for Robotics Manipulation Planning and Execution
Christian Friedrich, Ralf Gulde, Armin Lechler, Alexander Verl
Abstract
Automating complex tasks using robotic systems requires skills for planning, control and execution. This paper proposes a complete robotic system for maintenance automation, which can automate disassembly and assembly operations under environmental uncertainties (e.g. deviations between prior plan information). The cognition of the robotic system is based on a planning approach (using CAD and RGBD data) and includes a method to interpret a symbolic plan and transform it to a set of executable robot instructions. The complete system is experimentally evaluated using real-world applications. This work shows the first step to transfer these theoretical results into a practical robotic solution. Note to Practitioners—This paper is inspired by the actual deficit to automate maintenance tasks in manufacturing environments through robotic systems. The focus of this work is on providing a practical robotic solution which can automate maintenance tasks completely autonomously. For this, the different skills from manipulation planning to the control and execution are explained. One main aspect of this work is to show how to create elementary robot motion tasks from symbolic plans. The second important part is to explain the practical capabilities applied on real-world applications.