Robotic 3D surface laser scanning for feature-based quality control in holonic manufacturing

Abstract

The paper describes an on line geometry control technique which uses a laser sensor hand-held by a 6 d.o.f.-vertical articulated robot and displaced along predefined scanning paths. The 3D surface of manufactured part is digitally reconstructed after the robot drives the laser sensor along a scanning motion pattern corresponding to the part type (prismatic, revolute) and geometric features to be checked (direct measurements: lengths, angles, signatures, depth map evaluation: local and global indicators) against reference part models. The robotized laser scanning system is integrated with a 2D vision platform allowing thus to perform an extended set of geometry inspection tasks on manufactured parts (processed on CNC machine tools, assembled by robots). The described quality control technology is applied to holonic manufacturing by including in the order holon the inspection sequence retrieved from the product holon and the laser scanner robot enabled by the resource holon. Implementing solutions and experimental results are reported.