◎Our reporter Chen Xi
After more than ten years of joint research and development, the team has established for the first time more than 10 complete sets of industrial visual inspection equipment systems including measurement, guidance, detection, and identification. large-scale application.
Visual inspection is known as the "wisdom eye" of intelligent manufacturing. It is used in the industrial field and can replace manual tasks such as identification, measurement, positioning, and detection. It is a necessary means to realize industrial automation and intelligence.
But for a long time, the field of industrial visual inspection has been monopolized by foreign brands.
The core team originates from the State Key Laboratory of Precision Testing Technology and Instruments of Tianjin University, Easy Thinking Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Easy Thinking). There are more than 10 complete sets of industrial visual inspection equipment systems in 4 categories, and its self-developed visual products have achieved systematic and large-scale application in the automotive and aerospace fields.
A few days ago, the company's "Intelligent Manufacturing High-Performance Visual Inspection Complete Technology and Equipment" project won the 2021 Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award Special Prize.
Basic research and development promotes the application of visual inspection in industrial scenarios
Visual inspection originates from computer vision, but it is not completely equivalent to computer vision. Visual inspection focuses more on engineering applications, and its accuracy, speed, adaptability, objectivity, repeatability, reliability, efficiency, sensitivity range and Information integration and other aspects, are completely superior to human vision.
Therefore, visual inspection is currently widely used in the field of industrial automation, especially in scenarios with high accuracy requirements, fast moving speed of inspected items and high work repeatability, high-performance visual inspection technology and equipment can realize intelligentization for enterprises Transform, reduce labor costs, and improve production efficiency.
Therefore, using high-performance testing methods to drive process iteration, improve product quality, and meet diversified customization requirements has become an urgent need to enhance the core competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing.
However, visual inspection products in some manufacturing fields have been monopolized by foreign countries for a long time. Chinese manufacturing companies need to buy them at high prices, and engineers are all abroad. Once problems occur during the use of equipment, the communication cost of after-sales maintenance is very large.
In addition to being expensive, it also results in wasted time and affects production schedules.
"Although visual inspection technology is not esoteric, it is not difficult to apply it to actual scenarios, especially in industrial manufacturing environments with complex environments and many interference items." Zou Jian, head of the R&D Center of Easy Thinking (Tianjin) Technology Co., Ltd. Introduced, in the industrial manufacturing field environment, limited by the diversity and complexity of lighting, electromagnetic, and spatial structures, visual inspection generally has technical problems of low reliability, poor real-time performance, and weak adaptability, and technical applications are scattered and localized. , auxiliary characteristics, it is urgent to break through the core technology and form a complete set of technology and product system.
To this end, the team starts with basic research and development.
In order to make the "eyes" and "brains" better coordinate in complex environments, they solved the problems of high stability, strong adaptability and high precision of the visual inspection system in the field environment.
In order to prevent the "eyes" from being disturbed by the surrounding environment and to better recognize the work in hand, the team has conquered the high-precision online visual inspection technology for objects with special optical characteristics and complex surface structures; visual inspection accuracy control and error compensation in complex manufacturing environments technology; the industrial visual inspection performance enhancement technology deeply integrated with the manufacturing process, and also solves the problem of high-precision and efficient measurement of multi-dimensional and multi-parameter geometric features on the manufacturing site.
After breaking through various technical problems, the team integrated all technologies, and finally formed a complete set of visual inspection technologies such as large-scale automatic blue-light scanning, global tracking online measurement, and robot vision guidance, and established a complete set of technical systems for comprehensive geometric information perception on the manufacturing site.
In order to match the complete set of visual inspection technology, the team has also developed a series of high-performance vision sensors and measurement equipment, which solves the problem of guaranteeing complete sets of measurement equipment urgently needed for intelligent manufacturing.
At present, the project has been authorized 61 invention patents, 72 utility model patents, and 59 software copyrights.
Solve many problems in the field of automotive intelligent manufacturing
"From the technical exploration in the laboratory to the market-oriented product application, we continue to deeply participate in the automobile manufacturing process, gradually dig out more application scenarios, and successively develop 4 methods including measurement, guidance, detection, and identification. Large-scale and more than 10 kinds of complete sets of industrial visual inspection equipment, thus realizing the large-scale and systematic application of the four major processes of stamping, welding, painting and final assembly for automobile manufacturing. Liu Meitian said.
After using industrial visual inspection equipment, the production efficiency of enterprises has been greatly improved.
For example, Zou Jian said that for the paint surface detection of the coating process, the current common production line is detected by a combination of human eye observation and hand touch, because the tiny depressions or protrusions are only the diameter of a hair. The size is difficult to be accurately and stably recognized by the human eye for a long time, and can only be perceived by an experienced master through seeing and touching.
The paint visual detection sensor, through the "micron-level three-dimensional perception" technology, is like a real restoration of the three-dimensional morphology of the surface of the measured object under a high-magnification microscope. The detection accuracy can reach 1% of the diameter of the hair, and then pass The algorithm analyzes and judges data and performs stable and accurate detection of defects, which not only greatly improves the accuracy and stability of detection, but also reduces labor intensity. More importantly, it realizes the digitization and automation of detection. Greatly improve the degree of production automation.
In addition, the use of industrial visual inspection equipment can improve the automation rate of enterprise production, improve product quality, and reduce enterprise costs.
"Generally speaking, the automation rate of automobile manufacturing plants can reach more than 80%, but such paint surface inspection still needs to be carried out manually." Zou Jian introduced that manual operation is affected by the technical level and physical condition of workers. Ultimately, it will affect the test results.
Moreover, workers need to go through a long period of training before they take up their jobs, and the machine only needs to adjust the parameters and train the operators for a few hours, and then they can go to work like an experienced "old worker".
"Through the guidance of our equipment and the application of visual inspection methods, one equipment can replace two or three workers, which can further improve the automation rate of automobile manufacturing enterprises and greatly save the labor cost of enterprises." Zou Jian said.
At present, in the field of automobile manufacturing, some technologies in the visual inspection equipment of Easy Thinking have reached the world's leading position.
"At present, many foreign friends are already following our products." Zou Jian explained that the position deviation of the workpiece that our equipment can accommodate is better than that of imported equipment, which can greatly reduce the production line's requirements for mechanical positioning accuracy and greatly reduce the production line. cost.
For example, Zou Jian said that when installing large parts such as car side panels in the welding process, the robot has to grab the side panels from the material box and install them on the body.
Using equipment with small tolerances, when the position of the side wall deviates from the tolerance range, the robot is "overwhelmed" and cannot complete the automatic grasping of parts, resulting in production stoppage and huge losses to the automobile factory.
Equipment with a wide tolerance range has better stability.
Cut the price of imported products in half
"At that time, in the field of automobile manufacturing, imported high-performance visual inspection technology and equipment were very expensive. After the launch of Yisiwei's product, the price of this product was reduced by about half." Liu Meitian said.
In addition, Easythinking's visual inspection technology covers the entire process of automobile manufacturing, and solves the shortcomings of scattered, partial and auxiliary technology applications. Once the equipment fails during use, it is no longer the same as before, and it is necessary to contact multiple Enterprises carry out after-sales maintenance, which greatly improves the efficiency of communication.
At the same time, the complete set of equipment breaks the digital island, connects data between different equipment, and provides a reliable reference for enterprises to optimize production lines and improve production efficiency.
At present, Easy Thinking has become the "invisible champion" of the domestic automotive manufacturing visual inspection market segment for many years, completely breaking the foreign monopoly.
"Complete sets of high-performance visual inspection technology and equipment have been widely used in mainstream automobile factories, which has promoted the intelligent upgrading process of the domestic automobile manufacturing industry around visual inspection technology." said Guo Yin, general manager of Yi Siwei.
In addition to the field of automobile manufacturing, Yisiwei's technology is also widely used in high-end manufacturing fields such as aerospace, aviation, rail transit and ships.
At present, Easythinking has gone abroad and won orders from the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Vietnam, etc., and has become a Chinese business card in the field of automotive visual inspection applications.