Fall 2001

ME/IE 8773-8774

Beyond Flexible Assembly: An Architecture for Agile Assembly

by

Ralph Hollis
Principal Research Scientist
The Robotics Institute
Carnegie Mellon University

Wednesday, November 14, 2001
3:30-4:30 p.m.
Room 108 ME
Broadcast on UNITE Channel A
Coffee and cookies will be available in 152 ME following the seminar

Despite advances in integrated solutions, e.g., MEMS planar devices, many future small and complex electromechanical products will be assemblies of smaller components. Accordingly, there will be an increasing need to provide technologies and systems for sensor-based micromanipulation and automated precision assembly. Since the early 1980s, so-called flexible assembly systems based on robots with simple sensors which can accommodate parts tolerances and misalignments have filled an important need. Today, many classes of products are assembled automatically by such systems. Unfortunately, product requirements are placing increasingly stringent demands on flexible assembly systems which increase their complexity and development time, while product lifetimes are rapidly decreasing. What is needed is an approach retaining the benefits of flexible assembly while providing greatly increased responsiveness (agility) to changing market pressures. At Carnegie Mellon, we have been developing an architecture for automated precision assembly systems with the goal of drastically improving design, deployment, and reconfiguration times. As an example of the architecture, we are building a laboratory minifactory which will provide a unique and powerful reconfigurable platform for assembly research and evaluation by industry. My talk will provide an overview of the work and recent results in cooperative vision- and force-guided assembly.

Ralph Hollis received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics from Kansas State University, Manhattan, in 1964 and 1965, and the Ph.D. degree in solid state physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1975. From 1965 to 1970, he was engaged in computer simulation of space-flight vehicles at the Autonetics Division of North American Aviation. He was a National Science Foundation / Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique Exchange Scientist at the Universite de Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, for part of 1976-77. He joined IBM in 1978 at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center as a Research Staff Member, where he worked in magnetism, acoustics, and robotics. From 1986 to 1993, he was Manager of Advanced Robotics in the Manufacturing Research Department. Dr. Hollis joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in 1993 where he is a Principal Research Scientist in the Robotics Institute, School of Computer Science. Dr. Hollis is a member of the American Physical Society and a Senior Member of IEEE. He has served on several government panels, and the editorial boards of the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering: Structures, Devices, and Systems, and the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. He is founding director of the Microdynamic Systems Laboratory where his research centers on haptics, agile manufacturing, and dynamically stable mobile robots.

Informal Faculty Luncheon: Wednesday, November 14, 2001, 12:00 noon. Dr. Hollis will be able to attend.