PhD Censor - Johan Sund Laursen, SDU

Activity: PhD Supervision, Examination, and External Examiner ActivitiesExternal examination

Description

Thesis title: A Software Structure for Control and Monitoring of Flexible Automation

This thesis deals with the use of robots in industrial assembly and manufacturing tasks. The ultimate goal is to make robotics viable for small-batch productions such as those often found in small- and medium-sized enterprises. In many ways, we are predisposed to expectations on what constitute assembly systems. Expectations formed by large-volume and high-production assembly systems. 

This thesis challenge the preconceptions that automation is required to run flawlessly and without errors. We investigate a reversible programming approach and design concepts which help increase robustness and reliability of robotic setups and we present a reversible programming language for robotic assembly sequences. 

Programs written in this language can be executed both forwards and backward. Forward execution results in assembly, whereas backward execution leads to disassembly. This allows for a trial-and-error approach to automatically correct faults by backtracking in the program and repeating the assembly. Thereby effectively allowing many errors in robotic assembly to corrected automatically. 

The language supports both reversible and nonreversible features. Some task such as inserting a screw can both be done and undone, other task such as painting can be redone but never undone and finally some task such as inserting and removing a nail are conceptually inverse but requires different forward and backward instructions. The programming language supports such different kinds of reversibility and the thesis discusses reversibility in manufacturing tasks and its applicability for industry.
Period9 Nov 2017
PersonJohan Sund Laursen
At Organisation
  • Mærsk Mckinney Møller Instituttet
  • University of Southern Denmark