Abstract: A robot assembly system which uses a set of related databases to separately describe (1) what task is to be performed by the system, (2) details about how to perform the task (e.g., specifying the strategy routine to be used to insert a part into an assembly), and (3) data describing the workcell and object locations. The system includes software routines which control how each robotic operation is performed, but those aspects of each robotic operation which vary from part to part or from operation to operation are determined by the data in the databases. By keeping the what, how and where aspects of each assembly task separate, the present invention makes it possible to change them independently. Furthermore, the task to be performed by the system is typically defined by a Sequence database, which enables new tasks to be defined by simple, task level programming instructions, such as TRANSFER PART sn7400 TO u20.