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“ An inspection system designed for an autonomous lunar factory would need an internal laser source, a three-dimensional scanning pattern, at least two detectors for simple triangulation/ranging, a vision system for assembly recognition and position/orientation determination, and a large library of parts and assemblies specifications so that the inspection system can determine how far the object under scrutiny deviates from nominal and a valid accept/ reject/repair decision may be made. ”

“ In Japan, much recent work has dealt with the design and construction of robot "hands" of very high dexterity of the sort which might be needed for fine precision work during delicate final assembly and other related tasks. Takese (1979) has developed a two-arm manipulator able to do tasks requiring cooperation between the arms - such as turning a crank, boring a hole with a carpenter's brace and bit, sawing wood, driving nails with a hammer, and several other chores. ”

“ Under control of one minicomputer, the assembly proceeds sequentially through five work stations, each including two small Kawasaki Unimates, a table, special jigs and tools, parts feeders, and special end-effectors. Controlled by the minicomputer but working independently, each robot performs a sequence of previously taught assembly operations including parts acquisition, parts mating, and, if necessary, parts fastening operations. No sensors were used for manipulative control and, consequently, there is heavy reliance on expensive jigging for orientation of workpieces. ”

“ In PCB assembly, boards are selected individually from a feeding device by a robot hand, then positioned in a holding fixture. This method frees both hands to begin loading integrated circuit (IC) chips into the boards. The robot hands can wiggle the ICs to make them fit if necessary. ICs are given a cursory inspection before insertion, and bad ones are rejected. Assembly rates of 12,500 IC/hr are normally achieved (50 IC/PCB and 250 PCB/hr) for each robot hand pair, 2-3 per human operator. The two arms are programmed to operate asynchronously and have built-in collision avoidance sensors. ”

“ The vision system has to cope with poor contrast, partial views of parts, an infinite number of stable states, variable incident and reflected lighting, shadows, geometric transformations of the image due to variable distance from camera lens to part, etc., a formidable problem in scene analysis. ”

“ The assembly sector minicomputer,.on the other hand, directs the many microcomputers which control its various assembly robots, transport robots, and warehouse robots. The entire manufacturing system is thus controlled by a hierarchy of distributed computers, and can simultaneously manufacture subsets of groups of different products after fast, simple retraining exercises either Programmed by an "intelligent" central computer or remotely by human beings. ”

“ To service a 100-ton LMF Seed for a century would require one "warden" of mass 1 ton and a power draw of 10 W/kg. Conservatively assigning one MARR each to chemical processing sector, parts and electronics fabrication sectors, and assembly sector results in a total mass of 4 tons and draws 40 kW of power for the fleet of four MARRs. The main seed computer has a mass of 2200 kg, with 22.2×10-2 kg computer/kg serviced as in Martin (1978) . With 17 W/kg as for the PUMA robot arm controller computer (Spalding, personal communication, 1980) , seed computer power requirements are 37 kW. ”

“ Parts forming at work stations, each controlled by a Small computer able to load and unload workpieces, make parts and employ adaptive control (in-process operation sensing and corrective feedback) , and incorporate diagnostic devices such as tool-wear and tool-breakage sensors. Materials handling by different computer-controlled devices such as lifts, warehouse stacking cranes, carts, conveyors, and industrial robots with or without sensors that handle (store, retrieve, find, acquire, transport, load, unload) parts, tools, fixtures, and other materials throughout the factory. ”

“ Such a completely computer-integrated factory does not yet exist, though various major components of this kind of system have been constructed and are in use in industry in the United States, Europe, and Japan. The most ambitious plan to reach Merchant's level of full automation is the Japanese MUM program which aims at "unmanned manufacturing" (computer-controlled operations, man-controlled maintenance) in the 1980-1985 time frame and "complete automatic manufacturing" (computer-controlled operations and maintenance) by 2000-2005 (Honda, 1974) . ”

“ Assemble useful products during production phase (s) According to van Cleave (1977) , when General Motors began to consider the design of automated assembly systems for automobiles "the assembly of vehicles was rejected as being too complex for the time being so studies are confined to subassemblies." This area is identified as a major potential technology driver - insufficient research has been conducted on the development of systems for complete automated final assembly of working machines from subassemblies in an industrial production setting. ”

“ Another system developed at SRI International can determine the identity, position, and orientation of workpieces placed randomly on a table or moving conveyor belt by electrooptical vision sensing, then direct a Unimate industrial robot arm to pick up the workpiece and deliver it to the desired destination (Agin and Duda, 1975) . ”

“ Bin Packing for Warehouse Shipment
Bin packing (or crate loading for shipment) is a straightforward problem in robotics provided the parts and crate presentation difficulties have already been solved. SRI International has done a lot of work in this area. For example, using feedback from a proximity sensor and a triaxial force sensor in its "hand," a Unimate robot was able to pick up individual preassembled water pumps from approximately known positions and pack them neatly in a tote-box. In another experiment boxes were placed randomly on a moving conveyor belt ”

“ LMF Assembly Sector
5G.1 Assembly Sector Components and Technology Assessment
After raw lunar soil has been processed by the chemical processing sector into metallic and nonmetallic elements, and the parts fabrication sector has used these substances to manufacture all parts needed for LMF construction activities (growth, replication, or production) , it is the job of the assembly sector to accept individual completed parts and fit them together to make working machines and automated subsystems themselves capable of adding to the rate of construction activities. ”

“ Aluminum wire, spun basalt insulation, and aluminum base plates are provided from the bulk or parts fabrication system described in appendix 5F. After these parts are properly presented to the electronics assembly robots, these robots must assemble the components into major working electronics systems such as power supplies, camera systems, mini/microcomputers CPUs, computer I/O units, bulk memory devices, solar cell panels, etc. Electronics assembly appears to require a technology considerably beyond the state-of-the-art. ”

“ One design is an amazing driverless "intelligent car" that can drive on normal roads at speeds up to 30 km/hr, automatically avoiding stationary obstacles or stopping if necessary (Tsugawa et al., 1979) . ”

“ Joint forces were determined indirectly from measurements of drive motor currents. The software compensated for gravity and inertial forces, and included force feedback to locate holes for inserting two pins used to align the gasket (Bolles and Paul, 1973) . Compressor cover assembly - An assembly station using computer vision, various other sensors, and a robot arm with a force-controlled gripper and an x-y table has been developed to place and fasten the cover on an air compressor assembly (see fig. 5.43) . ”

“ While a properly designed hauler should be capable of bearing at least its own weight in freight, ATVs require special equipment for manipulation rather than hauling. A conservative estimate for the ATV fleet is 100-1000 kg. ”

“ The automated transport vehicles may have to carry the entire seed mass as often as ten times during the course of a year's growth, replication, or production. This is a hauling rate of 3.2×10-2 kg/sec or 0.32 parts/sec. ”

“ This will require a manipulator arm, vision sensing, probably tactile sensing, and advanced "bin-picking" software.
Early research concentrated on the identification and handling of simple blocks. For instance, at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory prismatic blocks moving on a conveyor belt were viewed, one at a time, with a television camera and their position and orientation determined by special software. ”

“ The Draper robot described earlier assembles 17 parts in 162 sec, or 9.5 sec/part, and the improvement to 60 sec for the whole alternator assembly task would decrease this to 3.5 sec/part, an order of magnitude less than the mean continuous rate required for successful LMF operation.
Assembly Inspection Robots
After parts have been assembled by assembly robots with 100% verification at each step, the final assembly must be inspected as a final check to ensure it has been correctly built from the correct parts. ”

“ There are 10 parts in the assembly operation, although one "part" is a preassembled compressor housing (McGhie and Hill, 1978) . Figure 5.43. - Exploded view of SRI compressor cover assembly. (Rosen et al., 1978.) Motor and gearbox assemblies - Kawasaki Laboratories has demonstrated that complex motor and gear box assemblies can be put together with precision feedback sensors and appropriate manipulator grippers and fixtures. ”

“ Automotive Stereo Vision Using Deconvolution Technique. From 6th Intl. Joint Conf. on Artificial Intelligence, Tokyo, Japan, 1979. Stanford Univ., Computer Science Dept., Stanford, Calif., 1979.
Seko, K.; and Toda, H.: Development and Application Report in the Are Welding and Assembly Operation by the High performance Robot. In Proc. 4th Intl. Symp. Industrial Robots, Tokyo, Japan, November 1974, pp. 487-596. Japan Industrial Robot Assn., Tokyo, 1974.
Shapiro, Sydney F.: Digital Technology Enables Robots to See. Computer Design, January 1978. ”