Design of Reconfigurable Automotive Framing System

Rapid deployment of remote laser welding processes in automotive assembly systems

“…Figs. 13 and 14 show examples of changes identified by the developed simulations which cannot be identified by current state-of-the-art approaches [19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Altogether, almost one hundred modifications have been suggested on the original product and clamping model.…”

Multi-robot spot-welding cells for car-body assembly: Design and motion planning

“…The problem of the production tooling structure for multi-robot spot-welding assembly cells is considered in [13][14][15][16]. This approach focuses on the identification of the flexible elements of vehicle body-in-white and their interaction with the production tooling structure.…”

Multi-robot spot-welding cells: An integrated approach to cell design and motion planning

“…The manufacturing process of body vehicles is based on three separate steps [5]: (i) manufacturing of the vehicle metal panels and their assembly; (ii) assembly of the vehicle lower-body with the vehicle upper-body; (iii) vehicle body painting. Step (ii) is generally directly managed by automotive companies, has been widely discussed in [5] where a 4-stage method is presented. Two of the four stages are performed in two separate subsequent activities: the manufacturing system design and the assembly process planning.…”

“…Specifically, the majority of these installations were devoted to spot welding applications [4] for body-in-white assembly. As depicted in [5], body-in-white assembly cells perform the complete assembly of all the components of the lower and upper body of the car and implement the joining process through multiple welding robots. Spot welding applications [4] for body-inwhite assembly will be considered through the paper as a reference scenario.…”

“…The separation of multi-robot cell design and off-line motion planning that characterizes the industrial practice can also be identified in the literature, where the integration between the two activities has not been adequately investigated so far. For instance, in [5] it is proposed a methodology to reduce the total design time, but the motion planning issue is not tackled. Motion planning and collision problems are partially taken into account in [9] where an approach for the design of a cell with cooperating robots is proposed.…”