Manufacturing companies are facing increasing pressure to shorten development and ramp-up times while ensuring assembly systems remain flexible enough to adapt to changing products and production requirements. In robotic assembly, this challenge becomes particularly demanding when multi-robot cells and special-purpose machines must be considered jointly during system design. Therefore, suitable modelling and optimization approaches are needed to support the design of such systems.

Research Questions:

How can robotic assembly systems be modeled and optimized at an abstract level to support the flexible and efficient design of multi-robot cells with integrated special-purpose machines?

Tasks:

As a part of your Master thesis, you will review existing industrial solutions and the current state of research in robotic assembly systems, with a focus on multi-robot cells and the integration of special-purpose machines.

You will develop a modelling approach for special-purpose machines. These machines will be represented as kinematic structures composed of simple geometric bodies connected by joints, enabling their integration into the existing simulation framework.

Your area of responsibility includes the further development of the optimization framework to address higher-level system design questions. The objective is to determine an appropriate system decomposition, including the number of cells and robots allocated to each cell, as well as the integration of the special-purpose machines.

Finally, you will create a model of a real-world use case and evaluate alternative system design configurations based on the extended framework.

Qualifications:

Applicants should be enrolled in a Master’s program in engineering, computer science, natural sciences, or a comparable field. They should have advanced programming skills, for example in Python, and be able to work independently in a structured manner.