<Abstract>

Robotics have seen advancements on several fronts in recent years, where we have all benefited and will continue to benefit through carrying out tasks removing them from dirty, dull and dangerous situations in a variety of sectors. While, robots have not historically been widely used in machining applications, but they have attracted a large amount of research interest recently owing to offering flexibility, potential cost savings and more degrees of freedom compared to traditional CNC machines. With the advancement of industrial robots, their functions are gradually expanding from replacing low precision manual work in all kinds of heavy, boring, or harmful environments such as spraying, handling, welding, etc. to the fields of high precision processing tasks such as grinding, drilling, milling, etc. Nevertheless, weak-stiffness, instability and low positioning accuracy are important factors restricting the rapid development of robots in the field of machining. This talk will overview the fundamental research of robot-based computer numerical control (CNC) machining, highlight the major challenge of robot-based CNC machining to achieve desired dimensional accuracy and surface integrity, and present the robot-based hybrid CNC machining with ultrasonic vibration and laser assistance, to promote the related fundamental investigations.