Develop a Non-contact Automated Dimensional Inspection System for Automotive Manufacturing Industry

Recently, a variety of 3D sensors have been developed for rapid freeform surface measurement. However, an automated dimensional inspection system is required by automotive industry to bring this state-of-the-art technology into applications. This paper introduces a robot-integrated area sensing system that is developed to meet this industrial requirement. The dimensional inspection system includes a sensor planner, an error map generator, and a sensor affixed to a robot. The sensor planner is adapted to automatically generate robot path based on the CAD model of a workpiece. The path data is indicative for moving the sensor in relation to the surface of the workpiece. Based on the measured point clouds, the sensor planner is able to further modify the path data for the area sensor to improve the measurement performance. The error map generator is adapted to calculate the deviation of 3D shapes between measurement point clouds and the CAD information.