Speaker Bio:
Dr. Stephen Kyle is a Senior Research Fellow in Large Volume Metrology at University College London. His current tasks include refraction analysis for the Light-Controlled Factory project, metrology for the new Airbus Wing Integration Centre at Filton, Bristol and development of UCL’s online knowledge base of 3D metrology.
He is also on the organizing committee of the new 3D Metrology Conference which will be hosted annually in different European countries.
His earlier background includes extensive experience of commercial metrology systems development with Leica Geosystems.
Abstract:
The Light-Controlled Factory (LCF) is a multi-partner UK development project directed by the University of Bath and running for 5 years from July 2013 to July 2018.
As one of the partners, University College London (UCL) has the responsibility to create a “ubiquitous” 7D multi-camera system which can track and align multiple manufactured components across a large manufacturing environment.
Multi-camera systems already have commercial application, for example at lower accuracies in the form of motion capture systems for entertainment industries and at metrology accuracies in automotive design applications.
The challenge in LCF is to make metrology-level tracking work over wide spaces using systems which, when commercialized, will be affordable. Vision metrology, based on multi-camera, real-time photogrammetry, and ideally using low-cost cameras, offers a good starting point.
However, the basic multi-camera network must handle other challenges such as the following.
1) Optimized camera calibration
Well calibrated cameras give the best performance and monochromatic illumination enables the use of a camera model tuned to a particular frequency of light.
2) Refraction correction
LUMINAR, a partner project which is now complete, gave UCL the chance to explore ways of mitigating the effects of refraction in a factory environment, primarily due to thermal differences in the operating space. These are likely to be significant at the longer ranges expected in wide-area measurement. The LUMINAR work is currently being taken forward into LCF and is being further explored with a partner in in the accelerator alignment community with similar requirements.
3) 6DoF “throw and catch”
Multiple types of measurement system are expected to operate in the future Light-Controlled Factory and they need to communicate and exchange information on a part’s current 6 degrees of freedom. One type of tracking system might need to hand over tracking control to another, or a laser tracker might provide refraction correction on long connection lines between camera measurement cells.
4) Large volume robotics demonstrator
Robotics will be an integral element of future factories and UCL will demonstrate this with a 2.5m snake robot attached to a KUKA KR500 system and combined with a 10m KUKA track. This will highlight the ability of low-cost photogrammetric systems to track robotic movement over large volumes. The current, intermediate-level demonstrator consists of the snake robot, low-cost photogrammetric system and integral sensing units spread along the snake length and capable of high-accuracy large-volume surface metrology.
Since it is intended to bring this research and development into the real world, it must be promoted to potential end users in an accessible way. This can be done through another project at UCL which is developing an online knowledge base of 3D measurement and metrology. A short presentation of the LCF profile on www.3dimpact-online.com will show how development work like this could be publicized in future. This should encourage industrial collaboration and commercialization.
