Robust and fully automated robotic bore inspection for high variant parts

Bores and internal threads are critical parts of connections, bearings and engines, hydraulic and pneumatic systems and defective bore surfaces can cause problems. Project FibreScope sets out to introduce a system for automated bore surface inspection. Current systems miss a high flexibility or are mainly driven by human interaction and control. Therefore the main target of this work is to develop an automatic robotic system for rapid and flexible 100% surface inspection of bores with diameters from 4 to 50 mm. The main focus is to automatically detect and localize bores on arbitrary metallic objects. Using a laser scanner range images are taken, the bore is automatically located, and an automatic endoscopic inspection with a vision system is started. The main focus is on easy operating of the system achieved with rapid programming for the user. The paper describes the fully automated system and presents first results of the experiments and a public long-term demonstration (4 days) during an industrial fair.