Presented in this thesis is an architecture, together with implementation details, of a software system for performing physical validation of automated manufacturing systems(AMSs), during the design phase as well as in actual operation stages.
Almost all the commercial workcell modelers (RoboCAD, IGRIP, Cimstation) are suitable for a physical validation of simple robotic workcells, but not suitable for general AMSs having complex job flows. The proposed software system can be used for validating a general AMS model by checking interferences among facilities, job flows, etc.
The proposed system has four major modules : 1) shape modeling module for defining basic solid primitives, 2) facility modeling module for modeling physical configurations including kinematics of the facilities in an AMS, 3) layout design module for constructing the physical layout model of an AMS, 4) factory emulation module for activating the AMS. The main results of the thesis research include : 1) modeling method for facilities in an AMS, 2) instancing parameters for standard facilities, 3) implementation of the software system using C++ and GL, 4) an application of the software system in the modeling of a flexible manufacturing system(FMS).
