Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division has unveiled HxGN Robotic Automation – a robotic programming and control software that enables non-specialist quality professionals to program industrial robots to perform fully automated quality inspection.
The platform enables manufacturers to equip greenfield factories or retrofit existing production lines with state-of-the art autonomous optical inspection cells, accelerating time to market by eliminating historic bottlenecks, while providing more complete data direct from the production line as products are made.
HxGN Robotic Automation enables manufacturers to accelerate adoption of Industry 4.0 by intelligently devising optimal inspection routines in a single step; a task that would typically demand significant time and attention from both a metrology and robotics professional. Manufacturers can now develop the programme offline, away from the production line in a digital reality, and deploy a robust programme to the robotic cell.
The software supports Hexagon laser trackers, Leica T-Scan and AS1 scanners and directly interfaces with Fanuc and Kuka robots while built-in postprocessors enable the robot controller to work with a wide range of third-party robots. Future versions will support the HxGN SLS Structured Light Scanner and third-party sensors.
President of metrology and production Stephen Graham explains: “HxGN Robotic Automation is for programming robots and specifically aimed at metrologists. The whole point of it is to make the process of programming robotic inspection much easier.
“Our customers are experts in metrology but not in robotics so it provides a simple environment where they can build a CAD model with the robots, turn tables, sliders and everything they need."