Abstract: In order to reduce the time and computing power requirement of the collaborative planning process of multi-welding robots,a collaborative planning method for multi-welding robots based on finite state machine theory was proposed. Taking the automobile side wall assembly as the welding object, the hybrid Genetic Algorithm-Gravitational Search Algorithm (GA-GSA) was used to solve the welding joint allocation problem of each welding robot in the working cell and complete the welding path planning. The collision zone between robots during the welding process was identified to accurately establish the mutually exclusive zone,and Stateflow tool was used to model and simulate the multi-welding robots system.According to the actual working conditions, the priority input of each welding robot in the system and the time required for each welding joint to complete the welding task can be set to obtain the optimal adjustment scheme of welding robot action in the system under this working condition. Two simulation cases verified the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method,and the results show that the proposed method can quickly and effectively complete the collaborative planning of multi-welding robots.

Key words: multi-welding robots, finite state machine theory, side wall assembly, collaborative planning, Stateflow tool