Manufacturing e-quality through integrated web-enabled computer vision and robotics

This paper investigates the development of a Web-based quality control system with the use of Internet-based computer machine vision. Such a system allows designers located far from the production facility to monitor, control, and program the quality inspection process as the product design evolves. Quality control tasks are performed and monitored remotely through the Web where Internet-based machine vision sensors inspect part dimensions and tolerance while Internet-enabled robots perform the necessary robotic operations. The remote quality monitoring system—which lets the user monitor the part status including data, image, and video through the Internet—is built using Java. The use of Java allows for interconnection and data transfer between the different components of the Web-based quality system and the robots. The ability to access and control quality control devices via the Web benefits the current manufacturing environment in the following ways: ubiquitous access to the production floor, remote control/programming/monitoring capability, and integration of production equipment into information networks for improving efficiency and product quality.