Positioning Symmetric and Non-Symmetric Parts using Radial and Constant Force Fields

摘要

Part positioning is an important task in manufacturing. New approaches have been proposed to perform this task using force fields implemented on an active surface. A part placed on such a surface is subjected to a resultant force and torque and moves toward a stable equilibrium configuration. Such force fields can be implemented using different technologies. In this paper, we study the combination of a unit radial field with a small constant force field. In prior work we proved that such a combination can uniquely position a class of non-symmetric parts. In this paper, we propose a more complete modeling of this combination which allows us to devise a method to determine all the equilibrium configurations of a part in the above force fields. This method works for both symmetric and non-symmetric parts. Beyond the method, this paper reports a comprehensive study of the action of radial and constant potential fields over parts with an original characterization of local minima of the lifted potential field.