ARM Funds Automation of Manufacturing Defect Correction Using Robots Project

Siemens Corporate Technology, (CT) has been awarded a grant from the Advancing Robotics for Manufacturing (ARM) Institute, with partners the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Manufacturing (CCAM), Yaskawa Motoman, Siemens Digital Industries, Siemens Gas and Power. This one-year project will develop an advanced, intelligent robotic system for end-to-end finishing of parts using a robot-based scanning and inspection system to identify imperfections and robot-based manufacturing defects correction. This solution will provide faster and more accurate finishing of parts and will free workers from these dangerous and repetitive tasks.

Finishing tasks are among the most challenging manufacturing operations for operators and technicians and involve significant health and safety concerns. While robots are well suited for automating repeatable tasks and demonstrate cost effectiveness in such settings, finishing tasks necessitate adaptability to part-specific imperfections and the ability to automatically generate corrective actions. 

The Siemens/CCAM/Yaskawa team will develop an end-to-end finishing solution consisting of three major parts: (1) robot based scanning and inspection system to intelligently examine a manufactured part and identify imperfections; (2) robot based corrective system to generate toolpath and robot path to correct the identified manufacturing defects; and (3) implementation and demonstration of the developed technologies with actual robots on a realistic use case.