Flexible robotic strategy for the assembly of ring-shaped elastic objects

This paper addresses the challenge of the robotized insertion of ring-shaped elastic objects into parts' outer grooves, which is a key operation in several industrial processes. We propose a novel flexible strategy to insert ring-shaped elastic objects of different sizes and stiffnesses, exploiting a generic robot and a simple - yet effective - fixture. Despite the overall complexity of the procedure is entirely poured on the mentioned fixture, its simplicity of realization and implementation allows to equip the robot with a generic gripper, without the use of any additional sensor. The effectiveness of the proposed strategy is assessed via experimental tests.