Coordinated planning and control of multiple robots and machines for surface-mount manufacturing

A general two-phase coordinated planning and control algorithm is developed to determine optimal motions among obstacles and dynamic objects in a shared environment. The algorithm consists of a two-phase approach: planning a global path for each object subject to the constraints of the workspace and then locally optimizing along each global path to minimize some process dependent cost function. The order in which objects are planned will also affect the overall performance of the system. The algorithm is applied to a simulated surface-mount assembly system. The results show an improvement over other planning and control methods.