Mobile Robotic Assembly on a Moving Vehicle

Mobile manipulators offer the potential of simultaneous mobility and manipulation to meet the challenges of complex assembly tasks. However, there have been few attempts to utilize mobile manipulators for automating the final assembly of automotive manufacturing process. In this paper, we present the development of control strategies for a mobile manipulator to perform the assembly of automotive wiring harnesses onto a moving vehicle. We highlight the coordinated control framework that incorporates pure pursuit tracking control, discuss constrained motion primitives and reactive visual servo with force constraints, examine contact forces of the wiring harness assembly, and present experimental results for both successful and failed attempts of attaching a wiring harness to a moving vehicle body. Finally, we discuss remaining challenges in achieving robotic assembly automation on moving assembly lines.