Automated Assembly of Large Products

The continuous need for agility coupled with increasing labour costs and improvements in reliability and capability of automation has meant a renewed interest in the application of robots to many manufacturing activities. Research at the University of the West of England, Bristol has focused on the design of an integrated, modular system for the assembly of large products. The work under the ALASCA project has resulted in a number of technologies that will significantly affect assembly automation. The paper will discusses the latest results from this work and presents the experimental conclusions thus far.