Planning of remote laser welding processes

The paper discusses the technical background of the remote laser welding (RLW) technology, its novel opportunities and implications for planning processes. Our ultimate goal is to develop a complete off-line programming toolbox for RLW which can provide an automated method for computing close-to-optimal robot programs. We suggest a workflow for the complete planning process, and propose new models and algorithms for solving the sequencing of welding tasks in conjunction with path planning, as well as for generating the inverse kinematics of the robot. The paper summarizes results of first computational experiments in an automotive case study using an industrial robot. The proposed method leads to a substantial reduction in the cycle time of the welding operation compared to an earlier approach. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.