Subject:
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Cooperative assembly line (Was: Car factory)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 16 Jan 2007 14:46:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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6374 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Geoffrey Hyde wrote:
> why wouldn't it be possible to get a team together
> to come up with a standard modular design for a car
> factory that everyone can contribute to, similar to
> the GBC?
Well... huh. First, just getting the GBC standard hammered out took a fair bit
of effort. Second, I'm not sure what to build. Several folks have now "shown the
way" as to how to build and coordinate a large P&P ("pick and place") type
contstructor, but I think you would have to specify a specific project with a
specific design ("build a car", or "build a railcar"... which is a very
interesting idea incidently, perhaps including recycling, or at least transport
through a train layout :-).
Or...
It would be neat to make a "general mosaic assembler": the ATV (Autonomous
Transfer Vehicle) starts at a programming station, where it gets the plans - a
detailed layer-by-layer description of what plates or bricks to place where on a
small (8x8?) plate on the ATV. All the ATV needs to do is move along a line of
P&P machines, each of which has it's own pallet of plates or bricks in certain
colors. The ATV moves along, asking at each station if that station has a
particular piece; if it doesn't it moves on, if it does, the P&P machine adds to
the structure and the ATV moves on to the next step in the instructions.
The nice thing about this is each P&P machine can be completely different, built
by different people, to handle different pieces. Each P&P machine would occupy a
linear piece of realestate that must include a track or guide section
(standardized) that the ATV can move along as well as a station of some type
(with specifications as to the ATV-to-P&P communication standard and
registration markings to get proper alignment at each P&P). But the P&P's could
be very independant.
There would be at least three "special" robots: the programmer, the ATV, and a
possible "unloader/recycler" that can remove the contructed prototype this might
be really simple, something the ATV can drive into to split off the prototype as
it returns to the programmer). The "program" would need to be a specified series
of parts (IDed by using the LDraw number?) in a certain color (another number,
perhaps specifying 3 or 4 different colors) to be placed at a certain location
(that'd be an X,Y coordinate relative to, say, the top-left edge of the 8x8
plate, plus a rotation code to say if the part is placed in a baseline
orientation, or one of the other four possible orientations. If desired this
might be better encoded as an angle from 0 to 360° as some P&P machines might
"want to do" that). You *might* also need to specify a height, but I suspect you
could get around that as long as you just "build from the bottom up".
Problem: what if your plans call for a piece that's not availible, i.e., but
placable with the existing P&P machines that show up on the day of? Solution:
the ATV does a "query trip" through the system, requesting what parts/colors are
availible from each P&P machine. The ATV returns this info to the programmer,
which will then only allow you to generate plans (through LDraw? LDD?) that have
those specific parts.
I'm guessing a NXT-based programmer and ATV could be very useful (for squirting
all that info back and forth) with the ATV equiped with an IR bridge to
communicate to RCXs in control of the P&P machines (let's face it, there's still
a huge number of RCXs running around out there, and a lot of the P&P machines
may be RCX-based). Here, IR comms are your friend, unless the NXT FW can be
rewritten to handle making and breaking BT connections dynamicly, from within a
running program.
> a group effort could quite easily put together a mobile
> multi-person car factory unit that is capable of being
> displayed at BRICKFEST or somewhere similar.
I'm sure it's possible. I'm not at all convinced it's easy, but it might be the
only way for most of us to ever get that much Technic together in one
construction.
--
Brian "the GBC was childs play" Davis
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Car factory
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| "Brian Davis" <brdavis@iusb.edu> wrote in message news:JBv2uu.LpG@lugnet.com... (...) I have an idea - why wouldn't it be possible to get a team together to come up with a standard modular design for a car factory that everyone can contribute to, (...) (18 years ago, 14-Jan-07, to lugnet.robotics)
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