Assembly Path Planning with Obstacle Considering

The aim of this work is to develop a new methodology for planning and generating assembly paths from the CAD model of a mechanical product. The generated path should permit to escape collision with assembled parts and with static obstacles of the external assembly environment. A literature study in which research and challenges in this field were conducted and used to define our research objectives. The proposed methodology involves two main generation levels. A first level, during the industrialization phase, allows the generation of combined and multidirectional assembly paths and avoids collision with other parts of the assembled block. Since until this level, the real assembly environment is not defined, the proposed strategy can be applied only for mounting environments with no external obstacles. Then, to overcome this drawback, the second level strategy was developed. It allows the generation of assembly paths that take into account the existence of external obstacles in the workspace. The different steps and methods used to develop these approaches are described and detailed through an illustrative example. To sum up, this paper sheds new light on the assembly plan by integrating the activity of AP planification into the CAD environment.