Design for Automated Construction

When an existing product manufacturing process is automated, the largest savings are gained when consideration is given to modifying the design of the product and the components from which it is assembled. Traditionally, the manufacture of the product’s individual components and its final appearance were the main factors in design. The final assembly of the product relied on the dexterity of the human for accomplishment. Humans have sensing, manipulative, and decision making capabilities that are far more versatile than the most sophisticated machine. When considering automation of a manual process, an important factor is to determine if the assembly operations are within the capabilities of the machine. The assembly of a product is often too complicated for automation and a redesign of the product is necessary to simplify the assembly process. The general rules by which this is accomplished are referred to as “design for automated assembly” techniques. The basic goal of these techniques is to simplify assembly so that the material feeding, manipulation, and assembly requirements are within the capabilities of the production system. This paper introduces this approach in the context of advanced technology and discusses a methodology to apply these principles in developing automated construction systems.