Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 15, 679±692, 2004

# 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Off-line error prediction, diagnosis and recovery

using virtual assembly systems
C E M B AY D A R * and K A Z U H I R O S A I T O U {
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125, USA
E-mail: kazu@umich.edu

Received May 2003 and accepted February 2004

Automated assembly systems often stop their operation due to the unexpected failures occurred
during their assembly process. Since these large-scale systems are composed of many parameters, it
is dif®cult to anticipate all possible types of errors with their likelihood of occurrence. Several
systems were developed in the literature, focussing on on-line diagnosing and recovery of the
assembly process in an intelligent manner based on the predicted error scenarios. However, these
systems do not cover all of the possible errors and they are de®cient in dealing with the unexpected
error situations. The proposed approach uses Monte Carlo simulation of the assembly process with
the 3-D model of the assembly line to predict the possible errors in an off-line manner. After that,
these predicted errors are diagnosed and recovered using Bayesian reasoning and genetic algorithms.
Several case studies are performed on single-station and multi-station assembly systems and the
results are discussed. It is expected that with this new approach, errors can be diagnosed and
recovered accurately and costly downtimes of robotic assembly systems will be reduced.
Keywords: Off-line programming, genetic algorithms, robotic assembly systems, virtual factories,
error diagnosis and recovery

1. Introduction parameters such as dimensional variations of the

Automation is one of the most unavoidable concepts
nowadays. The developments in the robotics area
have enabled using robots in large-scale assembly
operations for high productivity. However, robotic
assembly systems are very sensitive to perturbations
during their operation and this makes them open to
unexpected failures. As stated in a previous research
article (Luxhoj et al., 1997), these unexpected failures
cost excessive maintenance as much as 200 billion
dollars in the USA in 1990.
The unexpectedness of errors arises from the fact
that most of the errors are unforeseen to human
experts before the operation of the line. This is natural
since these systems are composed of many working
*Currently with Accenture Technology Labs.
{Author for correspondence.
products, ®xtures, sensor capabilities and robot
repeatability and when these working parameters are
coupled with the 3-D workspace, it is dif®cult to
anticipate all of the error conditions with their
likelihood of occurrence and 3-D-state in the work-
space (Baydar and Saitou, 2001a). One example for
these serious error conditions is the propagated errors,
which result from the propagation of undetected
errors during the assembly process. According to
Abu-Hamdan and El-Gizawy (1997), error-propaga-
tion is de®ned as carrying an undetected error from a
previous task and coupling it with another error during
a proceeding task. It is also stated in Cao and
Sanderson (1992) that, when a failure is detected
during an operation, the operation that failed may not
be the source of failure. The source of failure may
have been propagated from earlier operations.
Diagnosis and recovery of this type of failures is a
very complex and a costly task.