We review the “state of the market” and discuss some established technologies that are maturing to provide value to more end users, as well as some “cutting-edge” technologies that may bear watching.

Even with accessible technology developed to support their growth, the sad truth is that only a few manufacturers have fully explored the power of automation. The majority are still figuring out the best way to get started.

Following the automation of manufacturing processes in industry, the fourth industrial revolution is addressing digital connectivity and communication between manufacturing, but also quality assurance systems, i.e., NDT or NDE systems.

One of the segments likely to face the greatest challenges in 2022 are automotive plastics manufacturers who will continue to face shortages of the raw materials, composites and resins required for both interior and exterior vehicle parts. 

In roundness measurement – measuring the roundness of a part to confirm that it does not deviate from the known specifications on the blueprint – complexity has increased as parts become more complicated with tighter tolerances.

Robots are being added in locations that add value so companies can use human employees in higher value areas and tasks still beyond the scope of machines.

Manufacturers and brand owners are under tremendous pressure to ensure premium end-to-end product quality, especially as consumers increasingly demand perfection. And a great deal of that product quality pressure still falls on human visual inspection.

Machine vision for quality assurance (QA) has allowed manufacturers to overcome the limitation of human inspection in terms of cost and reliability. However, machine vision projects can be extremely complex and not suited to the technical and financial resources of most businesses.

The days when only large companies could adopt automation are long past. Collaborative robots (cobots), lightweight industrial robot arms (LIRAs) and affordable peripherals such as vision systems and grippers have created a new paradigm by making low cost, easy to use automation solutions available to small-to-medium sized companies for the first time. 

Vision guided robotics (VGR) is an automation technology well-recognized for enabling greater flexibility and higher productivity in a diverse set of manufacturing tasks over a wide range of industries.