Automated Terminal-to-Housing Assembly System for Flat Ribbon Cable Harness

2026-08-07

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of automated assembly for flat ribbon cable harnesses (FRCH) with multiple terminals under dense geometric constraints, where simultaneous insertion into a multi-pin housing is required. The work proposes a purely mechanical, fully automatic assembly method that operates without vision systems or active sensing. By orchestrating four sequential stages—cable alignment, inclined sliding, interlacing, and clamping—the approach leverages precision mechanical design to progressively eliminate terminal misalignment and interference. This strategy achieves, for the first time, bidirectional single-row FRCH terminal-to-housing insertion for multi-pin housings in a fully automated manner. In 80 end-to-end trials, the system demonstrated an 83.75% success rate, with a cycle time of 33 seconds at half operational speed, confirming the effectiveness and robustness of this sensorless mechanical sequencing paradigm for assembling flexible, densely packed components.

Abstract

This paper presents a sensor-minimal automated assembly system for bidirectional single-row flat ribbon cable harnesses (FRCHs). Unlike conventional peg-in-hole or single-terminal insertion tasks, FRCH assembly involves mechanically coupled multi-terminal insertion under flexible and dense geometric constraints. To address this problem, the proposed system performs the assembly through a purely mechanical sequence consisting of Cable Alignment, Lean & Slide, Weaving, and Clamping, without relying on active sensing or vision. Each mechanism is designed to progressively reduce correlated terminal misalignment, insertion interference, and instability before final locking. Experiments on bidirectional single-row FRCHs achieved an 83.75% end-to-end process success rate over 80 trials, with success rates of 85.0% and 82.5% in the first and second halves, respectively. The cycle time was 33 s under half-speed operation. To the best of our knowledge, this work presents the first automated prototype for FRCH terminal-to-housing assembly for multi-pin housings.

Problem

• flat ribbon cable harness
• multi-terminal insertion
• automated assembly
• geometric constraints
• terminal-to-housing assembly

Innovation

• sensor-minimal automation
• flat ribbon cable harness
• multi-terminal insertion
• mechanical assembly sequence
• geometric constraints