Inline measurement robots

Inspection has emerged as a new application for industrial robots. Until this innovation, car bodies were inspected on-line with arrays of laser sensors fixed in position over the production line. Using a robot to manipulate the same type of sensor gives more flexibility in the areas of the car to be measured and also reduces the number of sensors needed. Since standard industrial robots are only accurate to approximately 0.5 mm they have long been considered as as unusable for these measuring tasks. The flexible in-line measurment system (FIMS) therefore works with model -based error correction that determines kinematic errors such as arm length, joint offsets, backlash, compliance, twist angles and the like within the manufacturing process. This remarkable feature of FIMS is primarily realized by a thermally stable reference device: a carbon fiber sphere. Most major car companies have introduced applications of FIMS to date.