The challenge for those who do research at the leading edge of any discipline is how to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the real manufacturing world, which is profit motivated. The Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center laboratories at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM) is meeting the challenge with technology that may revolutionize the traditional approach to planning and developing automated assembly processes.
Sandia National Laboratories is operated by Lockheed Martin under contract to the Department of Energy (DOE). And, naturally, much of the work that goes on at Sandia is driven by the various needs of DOE. For example, some programs are driven by the need to deal with the various nuclear by-products generated by myriad DOE nuclear programs, including those related to nuclear weapons.
"But another major effort is to function as a motivating example for small-lot production," says David R. Strip, Ph.D., manager of the Intelligent Systems and Robotics Center. "DOE has to build in small quantities and with very high reliability. So, DOE is motivated to find ways to make automation work in smaller production volumes and with higher flexibility than industry typically works with."
The Center has operated as a discrete entity for about 10 years -- young by comparison with some of the other task centers at Sandia. The staff is approximately 150 persons, two-thirds of whom hold master's or doctorate degrees. "In terms of how we actually carry out our manufacturing research programs, we have a unifying philosophy with three main themes: automatic planning and …
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