TY - JOUR 
A1 - Pastor Alcaraz, José Manuel
T1 - Development and automation of a robotic welding cell Using machine vision in Halcon programming environment
Y1 - 2015
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10317/4923
AB - The current Project is developed in ACRO, Automatisering Centrum Research en Opleiding. ACRO is a Research and project Group in the field of automation, it offers a complete package of trainings and services in automation.
The project consists in the upgrade of a robotic welding cell into a complete automated application through the implementation of a visual recognition system. In order to achieve this big objective the total project have been segmented into three different task:
1. The installation and functionality of the robotic welding cell without machine vision.
2. Introduction, development and achievement of a vision solution that provides the position and orientation information of the recognised pieces to the industrial robot.
3. Encapsulation of the vision solution deployed into a visual basic environment to offer a friendly interface to the different users and operators.
Following the technology used in the project it can be encompassed into three different systems (they will be extensively described in section 3 of this paper):
 Robotic System.
 Welding System.
 Vision System.
The final objective piece to recognise and weld is a metal cylinder that will be fixed into a flat square piece. This piece has been selected attending to its welding and visual recognition challenges, which can represent an acceptable example of the potential of the final welding cell once the solution is properly developed. Actually, the current project isn´t an isolated development carried out by ACRO, it is also inside a bigger industrial project developed by different partners and it has the company Sirris as a main contractor.
Sirris is the collective centre of the Belgian technological industry. They help companies in the implementation of technological innovations, enabling them to strengthen their competitive position over the long-term. Their employees visit companies on site, offer them technological advice, launch innovation paths, and provide guidance until they reach the implementation phase. It is their aim to find concrete solutions to the real challenges facing Belgian entrepreneurs.
The project is called “Smart Factories. Towards the Factory of the Future”. It began in 2012 and it will finish in May of 2016. The goal of the project is support the manufacturing industry in Flanders by the development of intelligent factories increasing substantially the manufacturing production. The result is create a flexible production system able to produce small series with productivity in order to response to the current market trends. A list of concrete steps have been defined in order to achieve the purpose of the project. There are a total of seven technological phases:
1. Zero ramp-up: production of small test series or trial products to check that the specifications of the project are satisfied.
2. Safe human-robot interaction: safe human-robot work in order to the production remain accessible for operators.
3. Auto programming: challenge of achieve the automated programming of the robot according with the information captured by the vision system.
4. Intelligent automated quality control: integration and automation of quality control where the series are controlled 100 per cent.
5. Offline robot programming: development of the required software to ensure complex robot can be programmed remotely.
6. Remote monitoring production: generation of feed-back in order to achieve real-time monitoring.
7. To stand-alone to network manufacturing cells: cells created in the project doesn’t work as isolated islands there are communication with each other and with a Smart Factory.
In that way as a final objective once the project is finished, we are focus on the achievement of a real robotic welding cell that presents small, flexible and functional characteristics for companies that does not have the necessarily incomes to invest in the expensive robotic welding solution already implemented in the market.
KW - Tecnología Electrónica
KW - Automatisering Centrum Research en Opleiding
KW - Soldadura
KW - Welding
KW - Halcon programming
KW - Programación en Halcon
KW - Robot industrial
KW - Industrial robots
KW - Visión artificial
KW - Machine vision
LA - eng
ER -