Preparing sampling-based motion planning for manufacturers of micro-optical components

摘要

Today, laser manufacturers investigate and invest in automated assembly approaches in order to meet the high demands on flexibility, autonomy and efficiency and to counter competitive pressure. In the project “DeLas”, a consortium of manufacturers of micro-optical components and manufacturers of assembly equipment for micro-optical components came together with researchers in automation and robotics for transferring state-of-the-art methods in their academic fields to industrial assembly scenarios. Due to a surprising lack of automation and accompanying model- and simulation-based toolchains in this industrial sector so far, automation in micro-optical assembly strongly and newly benefits from tools well-established in other sectors, such as 3d simulation, visual programming and motion planning. At the Institute for Man-Machine Interaction (MMI), our role in ”DeLas” was to develop a 3d simulation-based IDE (”Integrated Development Environment”) for process development. The IDE aims at enabling laser experts and optics experts to develop assembly processes without prior background in programming robots. In our contribution, we first describe characteristic problems and approaches in micro-optical assembly, with a glance at process development and hardware setups. We then concentrate on the selection and preparation of the ”Open Motion Planning Library” [OMPL] to provide motion planning strategies for the IDE This contribution summarizes previous work, focussing on the transfer of methods from robotics research to industrial applications.