Clutch assembly is an application desperately seeking an automated solution. However, traditional industrial robots are not an option. While motions can be controlled very accurately with robots, applied forces are controlled poorly at best.
Most robotic systems use a position-based control strategy that is ineffective as an assembly tool in cases where the assembly tolerance is less than the positional uncertainty. To achieve assembly performance levels comparable to humans, industrial robots need to learn how to use force and torque feedback to recognize and correct misaligned parts.