A versatile assembly system, using TV cameras and oomputer-controlled arm and moving table, is described. It makes almple assemblies such aa a peg and rings and a toy car. It separates parts from a heap, recognising them with an overhead camera, then assembles them by feel. It can be instructed to perform a new task with different parte by spending an hour showing it the parts and a day or two programming the assembly manipulations. A hierarchical description of parts, views, outlines etc. is used to construct models, and a structure matching algorithm is used in recognition.Later version appearing in Artificial Intelligence, Vol 6, pp. 129(1975) (available for a fee).In IJCAI-73: THIRD INTERNATIONAL JOINT CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, 20-23 August 1973, Stanford University Stanford, California.

For the past several years research on robot problem-solving methods has centered on what may one day be called'simple' plans: linear sequences of actions to be performed by single robots to achieve single goals in static environments. Recent speculation and preliminary work at several research centers has suggested a variety of ways in which these traditional constraints could be relaxed. In this paper we describe some of these possible extensions, illustrating the discussion where possible with examples taken from the current Stanford Research Institute robot system.

This paper is a survey and discussion of research work relevant to the task of constructing some kind of reasoning robot. The emphasis is entirely on the organization of the reasoning processes, in particular planning, rather than on hardware. In practice the reasoning would most probably be carried out within a digital computer. My objective is to clarify the relationship between some superficially rather disparate approaches to this task, and simultaneously to indicate what seem to be the key problem areas. No new experimental results are presented, but the approach to the subject which I have adopted is a consequence of earlier experimentation with a simple computer simulation of a robot (Doran 1968a, 1969).