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Abstract : |
An assembly planner is a program designed to generate high-level plans for the manufacture of mechanical assemblies. At this time several experimental assembly planning systems have been developed. However each has defined the problem differently, using different definitions of an assembly plan and applying different restrictions to the planning process. This report surveys, analyzes and evaluates several key aspects of assembly planning systems. First the most common restrictions applied to assembly plans are defined and discussed. These include sequentiality, monotonicity, and coherence. Next, three distinct definitions of what constitutes an assembly plan are described and compared. Finally, several enumerative data structures designed to represent large sets of assembly plans are described. The limitations of each structure are discussed and exact upper bounds on their size under a variety of coherence constraints are computed. 1, |
