A Group Theoretic Approach to Assembly Planning

We treat robotic assembly planning on two distinct conceptual levels. Planning at the higher level involves deriving nominal trajectories along which the bodies to be assembled are to be moved. These trajectories are nominal in the sense that they would accomplish the assembly were we to have a perfect robot manipulating bodies whose shapes were perfectly accurate. Planning at the lower level transforms such a high-level specification into an assembly plan that takes account of uncertainty. High-level robotic assembly planning is concerned with how bodies fit together and how spatial relationships among bodies are established over time.