Industrial robot selection using a novel decision making method considering objective and subjective preferences

Robots with vastly different capabilities and specifications are available for a wide range of applications. Selection of a robot from among the large number available in the market to suit a particular application and production environment has become a difficult task. Many methods for robot selection have been developed to date. Keeping in view the research works on industrial robot selection, a subjective and objective integrated multiple attribute decision making method is proposed in this paper for the purpose of robot selection. The method considers the objective weights of importance of the attributes as well as the subjective preferences of the decision maker to decide the integrated weights of importance of the attributes. Furthermore, the method uses fuzzy logic to convert the qualitative attributes into the quantitative attributes. Three examples are presented to illustrate the potential of the proposed method. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.