Quality Inspection of Household Machines Using Collaborative Robot

Abstract

Quality inspection of final products is becoming an increasingly important factor in improving competitiveness in household appliance manufacturing. In this paper, we present a robotic cell concept for quality inspection of household appliances, which is used as an end-of-line inspection system. In the robotic cell, we use a collaborative robot. We mainly focus on those inspection processes where the interaction of the robot with the product is crucial. In the case of household appliances, this is primarily the inspection of buttons and knobs. We proposed inspection procedures that use the robot’s internal torque sensors. A parametric approximation of the measured torque based on radial basis functions was used to identify the faulty products. The criteria for defect detection are based on changes in forces and torques. Experiments on real devices have shown the success of the proposed methods.