Intelligent Control, Flexible and Agile Assembly in Manufacturing Systems

Intelligent control, flexible and agile assembly planning play a key role in integrating design and manufacturing. This field has the potential to produce automated and interactive tools which has a significant impact on the development of advanced manufacturing as well as on the concurrent engineering environment. Although significant advances have been made and some experimental systems are currently being used in practice, the most important work on automatic planning of mechanical assembly and manufacturing was until now scattered in a variety of publications. This book brings together in one volume the main approaches and techniques that have been explored, including theoretical aspects and practical implementation issues. This book provides researchers, engineers, students and scholars interested in automatic assembly planning and manufacturing with a state-of-the-art description of the important concepts, approaches and techniques, as well as the necessary background for future developments.