Abstract
The development of a flexible robot inspection cell is described. The cell consists of a robot, sensors, a vision system, and a conveyer (or an assembly line). The robot is configured as a material handling device. The sensors and the vision system provide monitoring information for the robot. The conveyer is used to feed workpieces or objects. After feeding the objects, pattern recognition algorithms are employed to detect desired features among the objects. As soon as the object is detected, the robot arm is controlled to pick it up. The cell has been physically implemented in the laboratory, and its cycle lime is about two seconds. Since the cell is very efficient and flexible, it can be applied to the assembly line of a flexible manufacturing system. In particular, this system is very cheap.