Smart check 3D: An industrial inspection system combining 3D vision with automatic planning of inspection viewpoints

In this chapter, we describe an industrial inspection system composed by a 3D vision system, mounted on a manipulator robot arm, able to perform quality and completeness inspection on a complex solid part. The novelty of the system is in the deep integration among three software modules: the visual inspection system, the 3D simulation software, and the motion planning engine of the manipulator robot. This enables an automatic off-line programming of the robot path by specifying in the system the desired inspection tasks. The system automatically generates the needed points of view in order to perform 3D reconstruction and automatic visual inspection. Moreover, the motion planning system can reorder the inspection points in order to optimize the inspection cycle time. The core of this system was developed in the European Project "Thermobot," and currently, it is been engineered to be deployed in an industrial production plant.