Web-Enabled Vision Guided Robotic Tracking Within the Framework of E-Manufacturing

Abstract

The current trends in industry include an integration of information and knowledge base network with a manufacturing system, which coined a new term, E-Manufacturing. From the perspective of E-Manufacturing, any production equipment and its control functions do not exist alone, but become a part of the holistic operation system with distant monitoring, remote quality control and fault diagnostic capabilities. The key to this new paradigm is the accessibility to a remotely located system and having the means of responding to a changing environment, which is better suited for today’s rapidly changing environment. In this context, this paper presents an innovative method in part tracking using the Ethernet SmartImage Sensor and the web-controllable SCARA robot. Remote controlling of an automation process using Internet can suffer from time lag, if the network is congested with heavy data traffic, which maybe the greatest hurdle for using Internet for real time control. The approach discussed in this paper overcomes the time lag for part tracking and mathematically calculates the product locations on the conveyor at various instances and efficiently guide the robot to the product. The accuracy of the proposed scheme has been verified, which vindicates the industrial applicability of the setup. The web-enabled robotic operations present many benefits, such as ubiquitous access, remote control, programming, monitoring capabilities, and integration of production equipment into information networks for improved efficiency and quality.