INTELLIGENT ASSEMBLY AND DISASSEMBLY PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Assembly automation is a classical field and well known since the late seventies. Disassembly automation is quite new and comes up approximately 15 years ago. In this paper some ideas and recent research results dealing with “intelligent” automation of assembly and disassembly are presented. Assembly automation is a classical application field of robotics today. Robots will be more and more included in assembly cells. The flexibility of these cells offers possibilities to automate assembling and disassembling of small and medium series. An approach for increasing the efficiency of disassembly cells – disassembly families – discussed. First ideas to introduce mobile robots in disassembly are presented. The premises and new direction in development of assembly and disassembly systems conclude the paper.