How IONA supports Advanced Manufacturing with Robots, and why traditional Machine Vision often falls short

IONA - Accurate Positional Awareness for Robots

We developed IONA to enable the use of automation for challenging applications, such as accurate drilling, composite deposition and trimming, jig-less assembly, and reconfigurable robotics.

Low tolerance, repeatable tasks requiring simple local alignment, such as bin-picking, pallet loading or pick and place operations are well-served by machine vision systems and are NOT key targets for IONA.?

The need for automation in demanding applications is rapidly growing, and so is the demand for real-time data – for in-process control and verification, and validation of digital assets such as digital twins and offline simulations.?

>> Driving high accuracy when local datum structures do not exist

Unlike traditional vision systems mounted on the robot, IONA provides absolute global position information, in-process and instantly. This allows process tasks to be guided relative to a global datum feature, rather than local, comparative alignment.?

This is critical for processes where local datum structures are not readily measurable, for example depositing materials (composite or additive manufacturing), trimming or machining, and aligning large structures and assemblies.?

Using a robot-mounted camera to set a local alignment can also fall short where process forces influence accuracy. Dynamic loads from end effectors and process forces can influence accuracy. IONA can continually correct to compensate for process loading.??

These factors have hampered robotic adoption up till now. For example, in aerospace there are often no features on a wing-skin and there is a requirement for both global (absolute) and local tolerances.??

With the ability to align and correct in process to global datum structures, IONA unlocks the ability to automate a far broader range of manufacturing tasks.?

>> Global Positioning for Local Sensing Data

IONA can provide global positioning for a wide range of local sensors, hugely increasing their usefulness. NDT sensors, Machine Vision cameras, Gap/flush laser measurements, defect detection, can all be enhanced with the addition of accurate global coordinates.

>> Improved Accuracy

Local sensors have traditionally relied on robot accuracy, but robot positioning errors are significant, and hard to predict especially with heavy end-effector payloads, or where external forces are applied.?IONA provides a more robust approach, as it provides external metrology data to guide the process rather than relying on robot accuracy.?

>> Positional Data as a Service

The IONA system runs 24/7 providing accurate positional data of all cell elements to the many ‘customers’ of this type of data. For example, data requirements of Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis, digital twin verification, MES, and i4.0 data visualisation platforms etc. While the uses of this data are highly diverse in an advanced manufacturing environment, IONA can service them all on demand in real time.?

>> Reducing inspection requirements

Vision systems are widely used to verify local geometry – such as a hole diameter – but they cannot verify the location of a hole relative to a datum. This is why manufacturers wanting to verify ‘in-line’ strive for ‘absolute’ measurements that accurately relate to a coordinate system.?

IONA provides external and independent information about the fixture and robot positioning via an independent coordinate system that can be related to both the product and manufacturing datum structure. This offers an independent and accurate verification of process performance, generating data for statistical process control that can be used to reduce the requirement for end of line inspection.?

Local sensors can only use the robot’s own understanding of position which is limited to millimetre accuracy or worse and therefore is of limited use for true verification of a product against the design intent. Using local sensing for in-process inspection is potentially guilty of “marking its own homework” (machine vision is blind to the global inaccuracies of the robot and is therefore blind to the very inaccuracies that the robot builds into the part). This problem is overcome by using IONA as an independent verification system.

>> Enhanced Diagnostics

IONA provides continual measurement of the key elements of an automation cell – alignments, in-process performance, fixture positions, etc. This allows accurate diagnostics to take place to ensure consistent output is maintained but also provide a baseline dataset to check against if an incident occurs. If a non-conformance issue is exhibited in a part, IONA enables easy identification of where an error/non-conformance is propagating from. Local sensors are unable to detect such interactions.?

>> Reduce TAKT Time

IONA is essentially instantaneous in providing data. A local sensor will take some time to complete an alignment or measurement routine typically having to move the robot and vision system to specific locations to capture image data which subsequently has to be processed.

>> No-integration

IONA is out-of-the-box compatible with robots with no new software to learn, no bespoke applications, no additional learning curve. The positional data is callable directly from the native robot program in a readily usable format.

?Since IONA provides data in whatever frame of reference is required, offline programs (OLPs) can be used in whatever is the native datum structure. Engineering decisions on local features/datums are not required.

IONA - The scalable network of sensors that provides metrology-grade positional data to automated manufacturing processes