AUTOMATION


Enabling a new wave of automation


Responding to a report on UK adoption of robots and automation, UKIVA’s Neil Sandhu and Allan Anderson argue vision brings similar benefits for productivity


A


report entitled ‘Robotics and Automation: A New Perspective’ highlights how speeding up adoption


of industrial automation and robotics can lead to dramatic improvements in productivity for the UK manufacturing sector. Published recently by the Manufacturing


Technology Centre, based in Coventry, UK, and the Industrial Policy Research Centre, Loughborough University, the report notes that the UK is 24th in the world for robot density in manufacturing businesses, and lags behind in productivity as a result. As part of its wide-ranging suggestions for


initiatives to address a variety of issues, it calls for a specific emphasis on SMEs to adopt automation and robotics technology. It could equally be argued that increasing the adoption of machine vision in the manufacturing sector would also bring significant benefits. Machine vision faces many similar


challenges to those highlighted for robotics in the report. Not only is it an enabling technology that has a clear role to play in complementing the use of robotics, it also has a much wider use in vision-driven automation of manufacturing processes and ultimately in the realisation of Industry 4.0 and the smart factories of the future. Te scope of machine vision embraces a huge range of markets, from electronics to food and beverage, to transport, to sports and entertainment.


Guiding robots Te emergence of collaborative robots, or cobots, and rapid developments in 3D image processing in recent years have paved the way for greater use of vision and robotics, either using a robot to present a component for inspection, or using vision to guide the robot or locate an object for the robot to handle. Massive strides in vision-robot interfaces have made this process much easier.


Robot solutions at the Manufacturing Technology Centre With continued improvements in camera


resolution and advanced image processing, vision-guided robot systems are becoming more sensitive and powerful, enabling robots to recognise shapes, textures and 3D objects faster and more accurately. Tey bring versatility for pick-and-place, machine tending, assembly, and complex bin-picking. Te use of vision enables intelligent, real- time decisions to be made on behalf of an automation system. Tese advances mean fewer human overrides, vastly improved productivity and fewer product recalls. While vision can enhance the role


of robotics in automation it also has a significant role to play in its own right. Tis might be inspection for quality control in manufacturing, but also vision measurements can be directly linked into statistical process control methods. By analysing trends in measurements, interventions can be made to adjust the process before any out-of-tolerance product is produced. In addition, a vision system can capture


more information than any other aspect of the production line and generate much larger quantities of data than other sensors. For example, a line scan camera with a 16k sensor operating at 120kHz line rate produces data at 2GB/s. Tese sorts of data volumes can be processed using the big data analysis


16 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022


techniques that will be embodied in smart factories of the future under the umbrella of Industry 4.0. Communication between all of the


component parts and machines is a critical requirement for Industry 4.0 in order to allow data transfer and sharing. Te continuing development of the machine vision companion specification for the platform- independent OPC UA open standard for machine-to-machine communications is providing a gateway for the inclusion of vision in the Industry 4.0 approach. Tere’s also an OPC UA robotics companion specification.


Demystifying vision Machine vision is established and versatile, with a multitude of building blocks. However, it is this very versatility that fuels the misconception that it is some sort of black art that can only be handled by vision specialists. Rather like the world of robotics there is a


need to develop skills and further educate the various markets to show what is possible using vision. A variety of initiatives are required in order to address this. One small step has been the emergence of out-of-the-box vision solutions designed to meet specific application requirements, such as for label inspection or PCB assembly inspection, or even out-of-the- box 3D vision-guided bin picking solutions.


@imveurope | www.imveurope.com


Manufacturing Technology Centre


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32