Högskolan i Skövde

In recent years, control system in the automation industries has become more and more useful, covering a wide range of fields, for example, industrial instrumentation, control and monitoring systems. Vision systems are used nowadays to improve products quality control, saving costs, time, and obtaining a better accuracy than a human operator in the manufacturing process of companies. Combining a vision system with a suitable automated system allow companies to cover a wide range of products and rapid production. All these factors are considered in this project.

The aim of this project is to upgrade the functionality of a Nokia-Cell, which was used in a quality control process for the back shells of Nokia cell phones. The project includes design, upgrade and implementation of a new system in order to make the cell work properly. The Nokia-Cell is composed of the following basic modules: vision and image recognition system, automation system devices (PC and PLC, robot), and other mechatronics devices. The new system will consist of a new camera, due to the poor connectivity and quality of the old camera. For the same reason, a new PC will replace two older ones for communication and vision recognition. The new system will also include a new PLC of Beckhoff to replace the aging one of Omron so as to facilitate the connections using the same language. In addition, IEC-61499 Function Blocks standard is adopted for programming the Nokia-Cell.

It is expected that the results of this project will contribute to both research and education in the future. In addition, it would be correctly to apply the results to industries in vision-based quality control systems.