Development of the instrumentation for a Flexible Manufacturing System prototype
Flexible Manufacturing System, Instrumentation; computer vision; inverse kinematics; manipulator
The Industry 4.0 concept makes manufacturing a greater variety of products feasible due to the integration of traditional processes and information technologies. This concept can be applied to Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS), which are automated assemblies of several machine tools, typically controlled by numerical controls (CNC's), and interconnected by a transportation, handling and storage system. A centralized decision-making system is responsible for controlling this grouping. The transducers present in the FMS aides to control and monitor production processes in real-time. This study aims to develop an FMS prototype composed of a conveyor belt and a robotic manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom, instrumented with transducers for locating and recognizing objects and supported by a computer vision system. Thus, the system described was instrumented with a laser transducer associated with a MyRIO 1900 microcontroller and a camera. LabVIEW® software allowed the implementation of inverse kinematics routines, based on the algebraic method, to manipulate objects between the conveyor belt and points of interest. Computer vision routines were developed to recognize color, shape of flat geometries and read QR Codes associated with objects on the conveyor belt. A Digital Twin system allowed the movement of the virtual system based on data received from the real system of the FMS prototype. Therefore, a system based on a conveyor belt, camera, laser transducer, and a manipulator allowed simulating the activities of an FMS with the identification and movement of objects. The manipulator control uses algorithms based on the concept of inverse kinematics and performs the manipulation of objects based on a path defined by a parametric Bezier equation. The computer vision routines developed were capable of recognizing color, flat shapes and recognizing information present in QR Codes associated with objects.