Self-organising assembly systems formally specified in Maude

• Published in: Journal of ambient intelligence and humanized computing Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 491 - 510
• Main Authors: Frei, Regina, Şerbănuţă, Traian Florin, Marzo Serugendo, Giovanna Di
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-08-2014; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Abstract machines; Artificial Intelligence; Assembly; Case studies; Chemical reactions; Collaboration; Computational Intelligence; Engineering; Engineers; Formal specifications; Industrial robots; Layouts; Manufacturing; Original Research; Product design; Robotics and Automation; User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction; Agile manufacturing; Maude; Self-organisation; Assembly systems; Formal specifications
• ISSN: 1868-5137; 1868-5145
• DOI: 10.1007/s12652-012-0159-2

This article recapitulates on the research done in self-organising assembly systems (SOAS) and presents the completed formal specifications and their simulation in Maude. SOAS are assembly systems that (1) participate in their own design by spontaneously organising themselves in the shop floor layout in response to the arrival of a product order and (2) manage themselves during production. The self-organising process for SOAS to design themselves follows the Chemical Abstract Machine (CHAM) paradigm: industrial robots self-select and self-arrange according to specific chemical rules in response to a product order with generic assembly instructions (GAP). This article presents an additional set of rules describing how the GAP is transformed into layout-specific assembly instructions, which is a kind of recipe for how the self-organising robots assemble the product.