An intelligent knowledge-based system for robotic cell design

As research fields in AI accelerate and a greater number of experts are demanded by industry, Expert y tem play an important role in meeting the technological sophistication required in today's competitive world. Industries are demanding the assistance of human experts for solving complicated problems. However, there is a shortage of experts due to this demand. Expert Systems are rapidly becoming one of the major approaches to solve engineering and manufacturing problems. They have been implemented for several practical applications in many decision making problems. Expert Systems are helping major companies to diagnose processes in real time, schedule operations, maintain machinery and to design service and production facilities.

Robots are an integral part of today's manufacturing environment. New tasks are being defined for robots in order to meet the challenges of Flexible Manufacturing Systems. Along with this growth there is an increasing variety of robots to choose from. One of the major problems facing the potential robot user will be his/her choice of an optimum robot for a particular task. Various parameters should be considered and the user should choose an industrial robot whose characteristics satisfy the requirements of the intended task. This paper will present a solution to the problem of selecting an optimum robot by building a Knowledge-Based Expert System. It uses the knowledge base and the rules to determine an optimum robot.