This thesis addresses two important aspects of automatic assembly viz., assembly sequence planning and assembly path planning. These issues are addressed separately starting with sequence planning followed by assembly path planning.

For efficient assembly without feedback systems (or, passive assembly), an assembler should know the ideal orientation of each component and the order in which to put the parts together (or, assembly sequence). A heuristic is presented to find the optimal assembly sequence and prescribe the orientation of the components for a minimum set of grippers = ideally one. The heuristic utilizes an index of difficulty (ID) that quantifies assembly. The ID for each task in the assembly process is computed on the basis of a number of geometrical and operational properties. The objective of the optimization problem here is to minimize the assembly ID and categorize parts/subassemblies based on their preferred direction of assembly while allowing re-orientation of the base part. It is assumed that the preferred direction of assembly is vertically downward, consistent with manual as well as most automatic assembly protocols. Our attempt is to minimize the number of degrees of freedom required in a re-orienting fixture and derive the requirements for such a fixture. The assembly of a small engine is used as an example in this study due to the variety of ideally rigid parts involved.

In high precision assembly tasks, contact motion is common and often desirable. This entails a careful study of contact states of the parts being assembled. Recognition of contact states is crucial in planning and executing contact motion plans due to inevitable uncertainties. Dr. Jing Xiao of UNCC introduced the concept of principal contacts (PC) and contact formation (CF) for contact state recognition. The concept of using CFs (as sets of PCs) has the inherent advantage that a change of CF is often coincident with a discontinuity of the general contact force (force and torque). Previous work in contact motion planning has shown that contact information at the level of PCs along with the sensed location and force information is often sufficient for planning high precision assembly operations. In this thesis, we present results from experiments involving planned contact motions to validate the notion of PCs and CFs -- an abrupt change in general contact force often accompanies a change between CFs. We are only concerned with solving the 2D peg-in-corner problem.