A Review on Significant Technologies Related to the Robot-Guided Intelligent Bolt Assembly Under Complex or Uncertain Working Conditions

In most existing bolt assembling operations, the human-machine collaboration (HMC) is used to guarantee both the operational efficiency and the connection quality. However, the huge labor intensity and costs are still needed when there exist bolts with huge quantity and multiple models in some special working environments, for example locomotive maintenance and automobile assembly. Actually, the robotic application can better solve the above problem. The main reason why this application is limited in the bolt assembly is due to the technological barriers related to the intelligent control. This paper firstly introduces the HMC-based and the robot-guided bolt assembly processes in detail, then summarizes the latest researches related to the significant technologies needed in the robot-guided assembly to show their present status and future trends. Finally based on the technology limitations this paper further presents some suggestions for future studies of each technology, which attempts to help readers broaden their research thoughts and speed up the development of the robot-guided bolt assembly.