Assembly planning using case adaptation methods

In our previous paper, we have shown that case-based reasoning (CBR) techniques can be used as a viable formulation for solving assembly sequence generation problems. The issues covered in that paper were case base organization, case selection and matching, and case indexing. The part on case adaptation was not addressed in a formal way to allow satisfactory generalization of the method to a large class of assembly planning problems. We present in this paper a methodology which formalizes the adaptation process of CBR using constraint satisfaction techniques. Combining CBR with constraint satisfaction provides a generalized formalism for assembly planning problem solving.