The general architecture of adaptive robotic systems for manufacturing applications

Adaptive system often refers to the adaptive control system. In this paper, we discuss the adaptive system concept from an architectural perspective of the system. We use the robotic system as an example to illustrate the adaptive system concept, because the robotic system is a generic system underlying many manufacturing systems. Specifically, the paper presents our work on the development of a general architecture of the adaptive robotic system for manufacturing applications. The contribution of this paper includes: (i) elaboration of the concept of adaptive system and classification of means to make the system adaptive and (ii) formulation of a general architecture of the adaptive robotic system based on the criterion that the more system variants out of the architecture implies the more generality of the architecture. Throughout this paper, we use an industrial robotic system for illustration. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.