Module aims: • To provide theoretical and practical knowledge of different industrial robot configurations, specifications and models, including kinematic analysis of robot manipulators. • To provide theoretical and practical knowledge of the hardware, optics and software components of inspection systems. • To familiarize learners with industry standard tools and techniques and so underline the growing importance and relevance of automated inspection in industry and its limitations. • To give learners the necessary knowledge and skills to specify and/or implement both robotic and industrial inspection systems and see potential application methods for their integration.
Industrial Robotics - Overview: Industrial robot applications and arrangements: cartesian, cylindrical, spherical & SCARA etc. Components and specifications: degrees of freedom, co-ordinate systems, repeatability, accuracy, control resolution, working envelope, payload, tool centre point etc. Robot sensors, actuators and end-effectors.
Manipulator Kinematics: Frame representations, transformations (pure translation, rotation and combinations). Denavit-Hartenberg representations. Position and orientation analysis. Forward kinematics. Inverse kinematics. Singularities.
Robotic Applications: Robot programming: languages, offline modelling, kinematic and path planning emulation. Artificial Intelligence concepts. Navigation techniques: vision guided motion, assembly & conveyor tracking. Case studies of industrial available systems.
Vision Inspection - Image sensors & hardware: Classification of the different types of solid-state image sensors and their characteristics. Camera types (digital, analogue & line scan) and associated image representations. Video standards. Digital imaging including sub-pixel resolution. Overview architecture and functionality of frame grabbers & vision processors.
Optical principles and lighting design: Lens calculations, selection and application examples. Lighting design methods; principles of light, front/back lighting, light/dark field illumination, offset illumination, use of diffusers, industrial systems available. Filter selection (polarization, UV, IR, etc.). Image calibration & accuracy.
Image transforms: Mathematical morphology (greyscale & binary). Binary structuring element, erosion, dilation, opening, closing, advanced functions. Distance transforms. Hough transform and generalised form. Frequency domain analysis. Inspection applications.
Feature extraction: To include histograms, histogram equalization, thresholding, lookup tables, convolution, edge detection techniques, pattern matching (greyscale & binary), template matching and correlation, blob analysis, optical character recognition/verification. Colour image processing. Inspection applications.
