Manufacturing Matters

When it comes to illuminating machine vision applications, customers insist on solutions that are faster, smaller, cheaper, and offer more intensity. Steve Kinney and Dave Spaulding of Smart Vision Lights share with Manufacturing Matters how their new offerings address these demands. The DoAll Light – which combines six lights in a single unit – is well suited for applications including automated work cells, where different tasks such as assembly and component verification each require a different type of lighting. 

Meanwhile, the company's new Dual OverDrive technology targets logistics and high-speed inspection applications with its intense output. (Up to 10X brighter than continuous lighting). It also allows users to attach polarizers to reduce glare when reading barcodes covered in reflective plastic, for example, without affecting the light output. Plus: See how SVL’s new facility enables quick prototyping and custom work.

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In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, Gerard Andrews, product marketing manager for robotics at NVIDIA, discusses how AI will be the key enabling technology for robot autonomy. A critical piece to achieving this goal is the NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform, an end-to-end solution for the development, training, testing, simulation, and deployment of AI-based robots designed to simplify development and accelerate time to market for customers. NVIDIA also uses an AI tool called reinforced learning to significantly reduce the trial and training time of a specific task, such as the dexterous manipulation of a robot hand the company has recently demonstrated. Although reinforced learning is primarily used in research, industrial applications are starting to deploy the technique — expanding the number of tasks and markets that will take advantage of these fine motor skills.

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How we think about light during the design stage of a machine vision system can be a key factor in a system’s chance for success. In this episode, Manufacturing Matters welcomes Chroma Technology’s Jason Cross and Jeffrey Clark to explain the role that optical filters play in machine vision applications, and how to achieve the best signal-to-noise ratio and rejection of unwanted light.  

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Building and maintaining a quality workforce has been a longtime struggle for the industrial manufacturing space, and the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the need for highly skilled engineers. In this episode of Manufacturing Matters, TECH B2B’s David Dechow sits down with Dr. Khalid Mirza, director of the Immersive Center & Robotics Lab at Oakland University, to share how the school’s industrial robotics program is graduating well-rounded engineering students who are prepared for careers in advanced manufacturing. 

Oakland University’s industrial robotics program began three years ago and includes partnerships with several major robotics companies, who advise curriculum and provide equipment. The program includes general engineering theory education, combined with hands-on labs for students to learn the skills needed to excel in today, and tomorrow’s, manufacturing applications. 

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Manufacturing Matters welcomes Philip Colet, VP sales and marketing at Teledyne DALSA, to discuss the latest in machine vision and imaging, including semiconductor inspection, SWIR/UV, line scan imaging, and more. 

Colet talks about semiconductor inspection and how represents a strong market for the company, as they sell many products to inspection and manufacturing equipment OEMs. Additional topics include Teledyne DALSA’s line scan cameras –which generate very high-resolution images at a lower cost—as well as finding the right wavelength for an application.

For example, certain applications require sensors and cameras with SWIR or UV sensitivity to detect features and defects beyond the visible wavelength. Additionally, Teledyne DALSA is developing solutions for another expanding market: agriculture and food production. Colet discusses what needs to happen for farmers to adopt enabling technologies at a larger scale.

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Garrett Place, business development at ifm efector, talks with Manufacturing Matters about making more efficient autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that deliver a better ROI for customers. One of the biggest challenges companies face when adopting AMRs is the system’s total cost of ownership. But Place describes a “paradigm shift” where end users have to increase cost to decrease cost. To be faster and more efficient, an AMR needs to add perception to attain a greater understanding of its environment — i.e., identifying obstacles so the vehicle plans a new path rather than stops. Adding this technology increases the robot’s cost yet decreases its overall mission time. This reduction in mission time allows the customer to decrease the number of robots required to manage throughput, and fewer robots translates to a significant drop in a company’s capital expenditure.

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Jared Glover, CEO of 3D vision and motion planning software company CapSen Robotics joins Jimmy Carroll, VP of Operations at TECH B2B Marketing on the Manufacturing Matters podcast to discuss the latest in 3D vision-guided bin picking/pick-and-place applications.

CapSen Robotics deploys 3D cameras and proprietary 3D alignment and machine learning algorithms to detect the positions and orientations of multiple objects in cluttered scenes. The company’s CapSen PiC product is a general-purpose 3D object instance detection system that can turn any industrial robot arm into a bin picking work cell.

During the podcast, Glover discusses the latest trends in 3D vision-guided robotics, the use of AI in robotics, and industrial automation overall, while also diving into some of the difficult applications that CapSen’s system has solved, the different industries and applications its being deployed into today, and more.

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Jeremy Bergh, president, North America at IDS Imaging Development Systems, fills us in on how advances in AI are broadening opportunities for customers. The IDS NXT is a smart camera that allows users to create their own vision apps and put them directly on the device. Meanwhile, IDS NXT ocean — an all-in-one embedded vision package that adds neural networks right onboard the camera — makes deep learning easy to use. (Translation: No coding experience required.) IDS customers are using the technology in applications ranging from the simple (e.g., watching for overhead lights to turn on) to the more complex, notably in the agriculture industry for tasks like fruit inspection or estimating the yield of wine production. Also hear Bergh’s take on 3D camera improvements and the unique way IDS is overcoming supply chain issues.

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Manufacturing Matters welcomes Marc Larive, strategic marketing manager at Xenics. The company specializes in the design and manufacture of SWIR InGaAs imaging detectors and cameras. Larive joins the podcast to discuss new products and trends related to shortwave and longwave IR. At the 2022 Vision Show, Xenics demonstrated two SWIR cameras — one ideal for fast inspections and another that captures even the smallest defect — and a LWIR uncooled thermal camera dedicated to thermography. While industry and scientific applications remain Xenics’ biggest segments, Larive sees growth opportunities in agriculture (e.g., food grading or checking water levels in the soil) as well as surveillance and medical. 

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For all the selling points robotics offers, safety needs to be a big part of the conversation upfront. Bryan Sellars, industry marketing manager at SICK, Inc., joins Manufacturing Matters to discuss this important topic and other automation trends. One of SICK’s newest products, safeVisionary2, is a 3D time-of-flight camera sensor with multiplanar lidar designed for robot and human safety. But safety starts before a product hits the factory floor. SICK performs risk assessments not only to keep workers out of the robot operation “danger zone,” but also ensure its products are implemented and applied correctly. While the company’s stronghold remains factory and logistics automation, Sellars sees growth in what he calls “off road” applications, ranging from autonomous construction vehicles to disinfecting robots in airports.

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