Automatic digitalization and performance assessment of manual assembly processes using a marker-less motion tracking approach
Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
View All
Overview
abstract
Manual assembly operations are still essential in modern manufacturing industries because of their flexibility and adaptability for mass customized production. However, as the product variety increases, the complexity of the assembly operations and workstations increases. Thus, several investigations have focused on improving manual assembly operations. One of the main challenges is the capture, digitalization and transferring of the assembly knowledge and skills of qualified assembly operators. In this paper, a novel approach to digitalize and evaluate the performance of manual assembly operators based on a marker-less motion tracking strategy is proposed. The aim is twofold: firstly, to digitalize manual assembly operations in order to log the experience and knowledge of qualified operators; and secondly, to objectively evaluate the assembly performance of new operators or trainees in order to qualify them. In addition, several new assembly metrics are proposed to quantitatively evaluate and compare the operator’s assembly performance with the performance of a qualified operator. The proposed marker-less motion approach uses a leap motion sensor to track and capture the hand motions and execution times of an operator during the realization of manual assembly processes. A set of experimental tests was conducted to prove and validate the functionality of the proposed method. The results have demonstrated that the proposed strategy allows the digitalization of manual assembly operations and the immediate evaluation of the operator’s performance.
