Design of an experience-based assembly sequence planner for mechanical assemblies

This paper presents a design of an assembly sequence planner based on a "plan reuse" philosophy. Most of assembly planning research in the past has attempted to completely plan each problem from scratch. This research shows that stored cases of basic assembly configurations can be applied to a given assembly problem. It is observed that the number of such basic assembly configurations is quite small. The planner divides the assembly into a number of constituent configurations, which are called "loops". These act as subgoals in its search for solutions. Plans retrieved for all subgoals are fused into a set of plans that are consistent with the constraints implied by each plan. Application specific constraints on the assembly are explicitly handled in the second phase of planning. Mechanisms for assembly representation and implementation details of the planner are also presented.