A Flexible Architecture for Automatically Generating Robot Applications based on Expert Knowledge

In this paper, we propose a general software architecture for off-line programming platforms to semi-automatically program a robot system and its end-effectors in industrial automation. It considers that such platforms should be geared towards domain experts - especially when regarding low-batch size manufacturing of customized products as part of Industry 4.0. Hence, it supports a process-oriented guidance for complex manufacturing tasks and includes the possibility for interactive planning with domain-specific user interfaces. Moreover, the extensibility for new domains, work-flows, algorithms, user interfaces or hardware plays an important role in the proposed approach. Finally, the architecture was successfully evaluated on an off-line programming platform for the manufacturing of carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRP) which can be characterized as a low-batch size production process.