Autonomous Processes in Assembly Systems

Today's assembly systems have to be flexible to adapt quickly to an increasing number and variety of products and changing demand volume. To manage these dynamics, flexible, reconfigurable, and autonomous assembly systems were proposed and partly realised in the last two decades. The flexibility and adaptability is realised by clustering the assembly system into subsystems and modules which get a certain degree of autonomy and control themselves in a decentralised way. This keynote paper will present the general principles of autonomy and the proposed concepts, methods and technologies to realise autonomous processes in assembly systems. Different approaches for design and autonomous operation of assembly will be explained and future trends towards fully autonomous components of an assembly system as well as autonomous parts and products will be discussed.