Zahid Usman | Loughborough University (original) (raw)

Papers by Zahid Usman

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2021

Publisher: Elsevier NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publicat... more Publisher: Elsevier NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 145 (2021)

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 2019

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, su... more Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Robotics and Computer

International Journal of Production Research, 2017

For many years now, the importance of semantic technologies, that provide a formal, logic based r... more For many years now, the importance of semantic technologies, that provide a formal, logic based route to sharing meaning, has been recognized as offering the potential to support interoperability across multiple related applications and hence drive manufacturing competitiveness in the digital manufacturing age. However, progress in support of manufacturing enterprise interoperability has tended to be limited to fairly narrow domains of applicability. This paper presents a progression of research and understanding, culminating in the work undertaken in the recent EU FLEXINET project, to develop a comprehensive manufacturing reference ontology that can (a) support the clarification of understanding across domains, (b) support the ability to flexibly share information across interacting software systems and (c) provide the ability to readily configure company knowledge bases to support interoperable manufacturing systems.

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 2018

The masking of aircraft engine parts, such as turbine blades, is a major bottleneck for the aeros... more The masking of aircraft engine parts, such as turbine blades, is a major bottleneck for the aerospace industry. The process is often carried out manually in multiple stages of coating and curing, which requires extensive time and introduces variations in the masking quality. This paper investigates the automation of the masking process utilising the wellestablished time-pressure (T/P) dispensing process for controlled maskant dispensing, and a robotic manipulator for accurate part handling. A mathematical model for the T/P dispensing process was derived, extending previous models from the literature by incorporating the robot velocity for controlled masking line width. An experiment was designed, based on the theoretical analysis of the dispensing process, to derive an empirical model from the generated data that incorporates the losses that are otherwise difficult to model mathematically. The model was validated under new input conditions to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and the masking accuracy using the derived model.

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 2012

Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various t... more Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various types of decision-making procedures. For product lifecycle management to advance towards knowledge-driven decision support, then this demands more than simply exchanging information. There is, therefore, a need to formally capture best practice through-life engineering knowledge that can be fed back across the product lifecycle. This article investigates the interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems concept. Interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems use an expressive ontological approach that drives the improved configuration of product lifecycle management systems for manufacturing knowledge sharing. An ontology of relevant core product lifecycle concepts is identified from which viewpoint-specific domains, such as design and manufacture, can be formalised. Essential ontology-based mechanisms are accommodated to support the verification and sharing of manufacturing knowledge acro...

Telehealth and Assistive Technology / 847: Intelligent Systems and Robotics, 2016

Haptics, as well as force and torque measurements, are increasingly gaining attention in the fiel... more Haptics, as well as force and torque measurements, are increasingly gaining attention in the fields of kinesthetic learning and robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD). For such learning techniques, it is essential to obtain accurate force and torque measurements in order to enable accurate control. However, force and torque measurements using a 6-axis force and torque sensor mounted at the endeffector of an industrial robot are known to be corrupted due to the robots internal forces, gravity, un-modelled dynamics and nonlinear effects. This paper presents an evaluation of two techniques, SVR and Random Forests, to recover the external forces and accurately detect possible contact situations by estimating a robots internal forces. The performance of the learned models have been evaluated using different performance metrics and comparing them with respect to the features contained in the input space. Both SVR and Random Forests require low computational complexity without intensive training over the operational space under the given assumptions. In addition, these methods do not need data to be available online. The SVR and Random Forests models are experimentally validated using Motoman SDA10D dual-arm industrial robot controlled by Robot Operating System (ROS). The experiments showed that force and torque compensation based on Random Forests has outperformed Support Vector Regression.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Abstract Collaborative robots (cobots) have been increasingly adopted in industries to facilitate... more Abstract Collaborative robots (cobots) have been increasingly adopted in industries to facilitate human–robot collaboration. Despite this, it is challenging to program cobots for collaborative industrial tasks as the programming has two distinct elements that are difficult to implement: (1) an intuitive element to ensure that the operations of a cobot can be composed or altered dynamically by an operator, and (2) a human-aware element to support cobots in producing flexible and adaptive behaviours dependent on human partners. In this area, some research works have been carried out recently, but there is a lack of a systematic summary on the subject. In this paper, an overview of collaborative industrial scenarios and programming requirements for cobots to implement effective collaboration is given. Then, detailed reviews on cobot programming, which are categorised into communication, optimisation, and learning, are conducted. Additionally, a significant gap between cobot programming implemented in industry and in research is identified, and research that works towards bridging this gap is pinpointed. Finally, the future directions of cobots for industrial collaborative scenarios are outlined, including potential points of extension and improvement.

Future Generation Computer Systems

Cloud and Fog computing has emerged as a promising paradigm for the Internet of things (IoT) and ... more Cloud and Fog computing has emerged as a promising paradigm for the Internet of things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS). One characteristic of CPS is the reciprocal feedback loops between physical processes and cyber elements (computation, software and networking), which implies that data stream analytics is one of the core components of CPS. The reasons for this are: (i) it extracts the insights and the knowledge from the data streams generated by various sensors and other monitoring components embedded in the physical systems; (ii) it supports informed decision making; (iii) it enables feedback from the physical processes to the cyber counterparts; (iv) it eventually facilitates the integration of cyber and physical systems. There have been many successful applications of data streams analytics, powered by machine learning techniques, to CPS systems. Thus, it is necessary to have a survey on the particularities of the application of machine learning techniques to the CPS domain. In particular, we explore how machine learning methods should be deployed and integrated in cloud and fog architectures for better fulfilment of the requirements, e.g. mission criticality and time criticality, arising in CPS domains. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically study machine learning techniques for CPS data stream analytics from various perspectives, especially from a perspective that leads to the discussion and guidance of how the CPS machine learning methods should be deployed in a cloud and fog architecture.

Eighth International Conference on Machine Vision, 2015

International Journal of Production Research, 2013

Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manu... more Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manufacturing industry and its many domains employ a wide range of different ICT tools. To be competitive, industries need to communicate effectively within and across their many system domains. This communication is hindered by the diversity in the semantics of concepts and information structures of these different domain systems. Whilst international standards provide an effective route to information sharing within narrowly specified domains, they are themselves not interoperable across the wide range of application domains needed to support manufacturing industry due to the inconsistency of concept semantics. Formal ontologies have shown promise in removing interpretation problems by computationally capturing the semantics of concepts, ensuring their consistency and thus providing a verifiable and shared understanding across multiple domains. The research work reported in this paper contributes to the development of formal reference ontology for manufacturing, which is envisaged as a key component in future interoperable manufacturing systems. A set of core manufacturing concepts are identified and their semantics have been captured in formal logic based on exploiting and extending existing standards' definitions, where possible combined with an industrial investigation of the concepts required. A successful experimental investigation has been conducted to verify the application of the ontology based on the interaction between concepts in the design and manufacturing domains of an aerospace component.

International Journal of Production Research, 2013

Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is us... more Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is useful in preventing unnecessary design revisions. A lack of interoperability between independently developed knowledge bases, however, is a major impediment in the development of a seamless knowledge sharing system. Interoperability, being an ability to overcome semantic and syntactic differences during computer-based knowledge sharing can be enhanced through the use of ontologies. Ontologies in computer science terms are hierarchical structures of knowledge stored in a computer-based knowledge base. Ontologies have been accepted by all as an interoperable medium to provide a non-subjective way of storing and sharing knowledge across diverse domains. Some semantic and syntactic differences, however, still crop up when these ontological knowledge bases are developed independently. A case study in an aerospace components manufacturing company suggests that shape features of a component are perceived differently by the designing and manufacturing departments. These differences cause further misunderstanding and misinterpretation when computer-based knowledge sharing systems are used across the two domains. Foundation or core ontologies can be used to overcome these differences and to ensure a seamless sharing of knowledge. This is because these ontologies provide a common grounding for domain ontologies to be used by individual domains or department. This common grounding can be used by the mediation and knowledge verification systems to authenticate the meaning of knowledge understood across different domains. For this reason, this research proposes a knowledge verification framework for developing a system capable of verifying knowledge between those domain ontologies which are developed out of a common core or foundation ontology. This framework makes use of ontology logic to standardize the way concepts from a foundation and core-concepts ontology are used in domain ontologies and then by using the same principles the knowledge being shared is verified. The Knowledge Frame Language which is based on Common Logic is used for formalizing example ontologies. The ontology editor used for browsing and querying ontologies is the Integrated Ontology Development Environment (IODE) by Highfleet Inc. An ontological product modelling technique is also developed in this research, to test the proposed framework in the scenario of manufacturability analysis. The proposed framework is then validated through a Java API specially developed for this purpose. Real industrial examples experienced during the case study are used for validation.

Production-centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards in... more Production-centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards information sharing across manufacturing decision support systems. As a consequence of the textual-based definitions of the concepts acknowledged within these standards, their inability to fully interoperate becomes an issue, especially since a multitude of standards are required to cover the needs of extensive domains such as manufacturing industries. To help reinforce the current understanding to support the consolidation of ...

Workshop on Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications (I-ESA), Apr 1, 2010

This paper presents the current status of the Interoperable Manufacturing Knowledge Systems (IMKS... more This paper presents the current status of the Interoperable Manufacturing Knowledge Systems (IMKS) research project. It sets the work into the context of Model Driven Architectures, explores the value of a manufacturing foundation ontology in the context of the design and manufacture of machined components and illustrates potential routes to knowledge verification across domains. It argues for a foundation ontology combined with specialized domain ontologies as well as verification methods combined with query mechanisms. It goes on to illustrate how the level of effective knowledge sharing can be assessed across multiple product design and manufacturing domains.

International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 2012

This paper proposes a particular method which utilises the unified modelling language (UML) as a ... more This paper proposes a particular method which utilises the unified modelling language (UML) as a design visualisation tool for modelling ontologies based on the Common Logic knowledge representation language. The use of this method will enable Common Logic ontological concepts to be more readily accessible to general engineers and provide a valuable ontology design aid. The method proposed is explored

International Journal of Metrology and Quality Engineering, 2016

Industrial robots arms are widely used in manufacturing industry because of their support for aut... more Industrial robots arms are widely used in manufacturing industry because of their support for automation. However, in metrology, robots have had limited application due to their insufficient accuracy. Even using error compensation and calibration methods, robots are not effective for micrometre (μm) level metrology. Non-contact measurement devices can potentially enable the use of robots for highly accurate metrology. However, the use of such devices on robots has not been investigated. The research work reported in this paper explores the use of different non-contact measurement devices on an industrial robot. The aim is to experimentally investigate the effects of robot movements on the accuracy and precision of measurements. The focus has been on assessing the ability to accurately measure various geometric and surface parameters of holes despite the inherent inaccuracies of industrial robot. This involves the measurement of diameter, roundness and surface roughness. The study also includes scanning of holes for measuring internal features such as start and end point of a taper. Two different non-contact measurement devices based on different technologies are investigated. Furthermore, effects of eccentricity, vibrations and thermal variations are also assessed. The research contributes towards the use of robots for highly accurate and precise robotic metrology.

This paper proposes a manufacturing core concepts ontology (MCCO) aimed at providing support for ... more This paper proposes a manufacturing core concepts ontology (MCCO) aimed at providing support for product life cycle interoperability. The potential focus of the work is interoperability across the production and design domains of product lifecycle. A core set of manufacturing concepts and their key relationships are identified in MCCO. Semantics are captured formally through heavyweight logic using rigorous rules and axioms.

Abstract Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes ... more Abstract Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various types of decision-making procedures. For product lifecycle management to advance towards knowledge-driven decision support, then this demands more than simply exchanging information. There is, therefore, a need to formally capture best practice through-life engineering knowledge that can be fed back across the product lifecycle. This article investigates the interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems concept.

Enterprise …, Jan 1, 2011

Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 2021

Publisher: Elsevier NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publicat... more Publisher: Elsevier NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Robotics and Autonomous Systems. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 145 (2021)

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 2019

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, su... more Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Robotics and Computer

International Journal of Production Research, 2017

For many years now, the importance of semantic technologies, that provide a formal, logic based r... more For many years now, the importance of semantic technologies, that provide a formal, logic based route to sharing meaning, has been recognized as offering the potential to support interoperability across multiple related applications and hence drive manufacturing competitiveness in the digital manufacturing age. However, progress in support of manufacturing enterprise interoperability has tended to be limited to fairly narrow domains of applicability. This paper presents a progression of research and understanding, culminating in the work undertaken in the recent EU FLEXINET project, to develop a comprehensive manufacturing reference ontology that can (a) support the clarification of understanding across domains, (b) support the ability to flexibly share information across interacting software systems and (c) provide the ability to readily configure company knowledge bases to support interoperable manufacturing systems.

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 2018

The masking of aircraft engine parts, such as turbine blades, is a major bottleneck for the aeros... more The masking of aircraft engine parts, such as turbine blades, is a major bottleneck for the aerospace industry. The process is often carried out manually in multiple stages of coating and curing, which requires extensive time and introduces variations in the masking quality. This paper investigates the automation of the masking process utilising the wellestablished time-pressure (T/P) dispensing process for controlled maskant dispensing, and a robotic manipulator for accurate part handling. A mathematical model for the T/P dispensing process was derived, extending previous models from the literature by incorporating the robot velocity for controlled masking line width. An experiment was designed, based on the theoretical analysis of the dispensing process, to derive an empirical model from the generated data that incorporates the losses that are otherwise difficult to model mathematically. The model was validated under new input conditions to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach and the masking accuracy using the derived model.

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, 2012

Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various t... more Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various types of decision-making procedures. For product lifecycle management to advance towards knowledge-driven decision support, then this demands more than simply exchanging information. There is, therefore, a need to formally capture best practice through-life engineering knowledge that can be fed back across the product lifecycle. This article investigates the interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems concept. Interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems use an expressive ontological approach that drives the improved configuration of product lifecycle management systems for manufacturing knowledge sharing. An ontology of relevant core product lifecycle concepts is identified from which viewpoint-specific domains, such as design and manufacture, can be formalised. Essential ontology-based mechanisms are accommodated to support the verification and sharing of manufacturing knowledge acro...

Telehealth and Assistive Technology / 847: Intelligent Systems and Robotics, 2016

Haptics, as well as force and torque measurements, are increasingly gaining attention in the fiel... more Haptics, as well as force and torque measurements, are increasingly gaining attention in the fields of kinesthetic learning and robot Learning from Demonstration (LfD). For such learning techniques, it is essential to obtain accurate force and torque measurements in order to enable accurate control. However, force and torque measurements using a 6-axis force and torque sensor mounted at the endeffector of an industrial robot are known to be corrupted due to the robots internal forces, gravity, un-modelled dynamics and nonlinear effects. This paper presents an evaluation of two techniques, SVR and Random Forests, to recover the external forces and accurately detect possible contact situations by estimating a robots internal forces. The performance of the learned models have been evaluated using different performance metrics and comparing them with respect to the features contained in the input space. Both SVR and Random Forests require low computational complexity without intensive training over the operational space under the given assumptions. In addition, these methods do not need data to be available online. The SVR and Random Forests models are experimentally validated using Motoman SDA10D dual-arm industrial robot controlled by Robot Operating System (ROS). The experiments showed that force and torque compensation based on Random Forests has outperformed Support Vector Regression.

Robotics and Autonomous Systems

Abstract Collaborative robots (cobots) have been increasingly adopted in industries to facilitate... more Abstract Collaborative robots (cobots) have been increasingly adopted in industries to facilitate human–robot collaboration. Despite this, it is challenging to program cobots for collaborative industrial tasks as the programming has two distinct elements that are difficult to implement: (1) an intuitive element to ensure that the operations of a cobot can be composed or altered dynamically by an operator, and (2) a human-aware element to support cobots in producing flexible and adaptive behaviours dependent on human partners. In this area, some research works have been carried out recently, but there is a lack of a systematic summary on the subject. In this paper, an overview of collaborative industrial scenarios and programming requirements for cobots to implement effective collaboration is given. Then, detailed reviews on cobot programming, which are categorised into communication, optimisation, and learning, are conducted. Additionally, a significant gap between cobot programming implemented in industry and in research is identified, and research that works towards bridging this gap is pinpointed. Finally, the future directions of cobots for industrial collaborative scenarios are outlined, including potential points of extension and improvement.

Future Generation Computer Systems

Cloud and Fog computing has emerged as a promising paradigm for the Internet of things (IoT) and ... more Cloud and Fog computing has emerged as a promising paradigm for the Internet of things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS). One characteristic of CPS is the reciprocal feedback loops between physical processes and cyber elements (computation, software and networking), which implies that data stream analytics is one of the core components of CPS. The reasons for this are: (i) it extracts the insights and the knowledge from the data streams generated by various sensors and other monitoring components embedded in the physical systems; (ii) it supports informed decision making; (iii) it enables feedback from the physical processes to the cyber counterparts; (iv) it eventually facilitates the integration of cyber and physical systems. There have been many successful applications of data streams analytics, powered by machine learning techniques, to CPS systems. Thus, it is necessary to have a survey on the particularities of the application of machine learning techniques to the CPS domain. In particular, we explore how machine learning methods should be deployed and integrated in cloud and fog architectures for better fulfilment of the requirements, e.g. mission criticality and time criticality, arising in CPS domains. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically study machine learning techniques for CPS data stream analytics from various perspectives, especially from a perspective that leads to the discussion and guidance of how the CPS machine learning methods should be deployed in a cloud and fog architecture.

Eighth International Conference on Machine Vision, 2015

International Journal of Production Research, 2013

Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manu... more Due to the advancement in the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), manufacturing industry and its many domains employ a wide range of different ICT tools. To be competitive, industries need to communicate effectively within and across their many system domains. This communication is hindered by the diversity in the semantics of concepts and information structures of these different domain systems. Whilst international standards provide an effective route to information sharing within narrowly specified domains, they are themselves not interoperable across the wide range of application domains needed to support manufacturing industry due to the inconsistency of concept semantics. Formal ontologies have shown promise in removing interpretation problems by computationally capturing the semantics of concepts, ensuring their consistency and thus providing a verifiable and shared understanding across multiple domains. The research work reported in this paper contributes to the development of formal reference ontology for manufacturing, which is envisaged as a key component in future interoperable manufacturing systems. A set of core manufacturing concepts are identified and their semantics have been captured in formal logic based on exploiting and extending existing standards' definitions, where possible combined with an industrial investigation of the concepts required. A successful experimental investigation has been conducted to verify the application of the ontology based on the interaction between concepts in the design and manufacturing domains of an aerospace component.

International Journal of Production Research, 2013

Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is us... more Seamless computer-based knowledge sharing between departments of a manufacturing enterprise is useful in preventing unnecessary design revisions. A lack of interoperability between independently developed knowledge bases, however, is a major impediment in the development of a seamless knowledge sharing system. Interoperability, being an ability to overcome semantic and syntactic differences during computer-based knowledge sharing can be enhanced through the use of ontologies. Ontologies in computer science terms are hierarchical structures of knowledge stored in a computer-based knowledge base. Ontologies have been accepted by all as an interoperable medium to provide a non-subjective way of storing and sharing knowledge across diverse domains. Some semantic and syntactic differences, however, still crop up when these ontological knowledge bases are developed independently. A case study in an aerospace components manufacturing company suggests that shape features of a component are perceived differently by the designing and manufacturing departments. These differences cause further misunderstanding and misinterpretation when computer-based knowledge sharing systems are used across the two domains. Foundation or core ontologies can be used to overcome these differences and to ensure a seamless sharing of knowledge. This is because these ontologies provide a common grounding for domain ontologies to be used by individual domains or department. This common grounding can be used by the mediation and knowledge verification systems to authenticate the meaning of knowledge understood across different domains. For this reason, this research proposes a knowledge verification framework for developing a system capable of verifying knowledge between those domain ontologies which are developed out of a common core or foundation ontology. This framework makes use of ontology logic to standardize the way concepts from a foundation and core-concepts ontology are used in domain ontologies and then by using the same principles the knowledge being shared is verified. The Knowledge Frame Language which is based on Common Logic is used for formalizing example ontologies. The ontology editor used for browsing and querying ontologies is the Integrated Ontology Development Environment (IODE) by Highfleet Inc. An ontological product modelling technique is also developed in this research, to test the proposed framework in the scenario of manufacturability analysis. The proposed framework is then validated through a Java API specially developed for this purpose. Real industrial examples experienced during the case study are used for validation.

Production-centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards in... more Production-centric international standards are intended to serve as an important route towards information sharing across manufacturing decision support systems. As a consequence of the textual-based definitions of the concepts acknowledged within these standards, their inability to fully interoperate becomes an issue, especially since a multitude of standards are required to cover the needs of extensive domains such as manufacturing industries. To help reinforce the current understanding to support the consolidation of ...

Workshop on Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications (I-ESA), Apr 1, 2010

This paper presents the current status of the Interoperable Manufacturing Knowledge Systems (IMKS... more This paper presents the current status of the Interoperable Manufacturing Knowledge Systems (IMKS) research project. It sets the work into the context of Model Driven Architectures, explores the value of a manufacturing foundation ontology in the context of the design and manufacture of machined components and illustrates potential routes to knowledge verification across domains. It argues for a foundation ontology combined with specialized domain ontologies as well as verification methods combined with query mechanisms. It goes on to illustrate how the level of effective knowledge sharing can be assessed across multiple product design and manufacturing domains.

International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 2012

This paper proposes a particular method which utilises the unified modelling language (UML) as a ... more This paper proposes a particular method which utilises the unified modelling language (UML) as a design visualisation tool for modelling ontologies based on the Common Logic knowledge representation language. The use of this method will enable Common Logic ontological concepts to be more readily accessible to general engineers and provide a valuable ontology design aid. The method proposed is explored

International Journal of Metrology and Quality Engineering, 2016

Industrial robots arms are widely used in manufacturing industry because of their support for aut... more Industrial robots arms are widely used in manufacturing industry because of their support for automation. However, in metrology, robots have had limited application due to their insufficient accuracy. Even using error compensation and calibration methods, robots are not effective for micrometre (μm) level metrology. Non-contact measurement devices can potentially enable the use of robots for highly accurate metrology. However, the use of such devices on robots has not been investigated. The research work reported in this paper explores the use of different non-contact measurement devices on an industrial robot. The aim is to experimentally investigate the effects of robot movements on the accuracy and precision of measurements. The focus has been on assessing the ability to accurately measure various geometric and surface parameters of holes despite the inherent inaccuracies of industrial robot. This involves the measurement of diameter, roundness and surface roughness. The study also includes scanning of holes for measuring internal features such as start and end point of a taper. Two different non-contact measurement devices based on different technologies are investigated. Furthermore, effects of eccentricity, vibrations and thermal variations are also assessed. The research contributes towards the use of robots for highly accurate and precise robotic metrology.

This paper proposes a manufacturing core concepts ontology (MCCO) aimed at providing support for ... more This paper proposes a manufacturing core concepts ontology (MCCO) aimed at providing support for product life cycle interoperability. The potential focus of the work is interoperability across the production and design domains of product lifecycle. A core set of manufacturing concepts and their key relationships are identified in MCCO. Semantics are captured formally through heavyweight logic using rigorous rules and axioms.

Abstract Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes ... more Abstract Product lifecycle management provides a framework for information sharing that promotes various types of decision-making procedures. For product lifecycle management to advance towards knowledge-driven decision support, then this demands more than simply exchanging information. There is, therefore, a need to formally capture best practice through-life engineering knowledge that can be fed back across the product lifecycle. This article investigates the interoperable manufacturing knowledge systems concept.

Enterprise …, Jan 1, 2011