Robot-enabled precision inspection with autonomous process control

Flexxbotics has partnered with GelSight to deliver a joint solution for robot-enabled non-destructive testing (NDT) with autonomous process control. The joint solution incorporates GelSight’s tactile sensing technology into Flexxbotics for advanced robotic machine tending, highly precise quality inspection, and digital thread traceability that decreases time-to-inspect by 40% or more.

Next-generation smart factories – in aerospace, defence, medical devices, automotive and other industries where measurement accuracy is critical in tight tolerance processing – can now use industrial robots and collaborative robots to dramatically speed inspection processes, increase throughput, and improve margins. GelSight’s unique technology uses 3D imaging to map surface finish and defects on any material, anywhere at the micron level. By robot-enabling its tactile sensing devices with Flexxbotics, the companies can rapidly perform hundreds of precision measurements during processing on the production line instead of transporting parts to specialised lab equipment or relying on outside laboratory services.

Flexxbotics provides interoperable communication between the robots and GelSight devices, coordinating the entire process and connecting directly with existing business systems in the plant, including the CAD/PLM, QMS, IIoT and others for closed-loop quality compliance. Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) for each part is automatically fed by Flexxbotics directly into the robot and GelSight programs assuring critical characteristic measurement integrity with inspection results collected for nonconformance tracking and analysis. Optionally, data can be transferred to quality repositories and MES systems of record. The company also sends defect alerts in text and email, with prior operations receiving escalations for root cause identification and processing corrections based on autonomous process control instructions.

“Together GelSight and Flexxbotics provide a new level of inspection productivity, scrap reduction, and cost savings using tactile sensing and production robotics,” said GelSight CEO Youssef Benmokhtar. “Now, even the most challenging aspects to dimensionally measure accurately can be consistently inspected in a fraction of the time using robotics.”

“We believe robot-driven manufacturing is the future, and our partnership with GelSight combines some of the most advanced automated inspection capabilities on the planet with Flexxbotics production robotic orchestration for next-level factory autonomy,” explained Tyler Bouchard, CEO and co-founder of Flexxbotics. “Using GelSight tactile sensing to inspect during production enables robots to achieve micron-scale measurement accuracy, bringing autonomous process control with Flexxbotics to the most complex geometry parts.”