The objective of this research is twofold. The first objective is to develop an automated dimensional inspection system for manufactured objects. The second objective is to develop an intelligent inspection planning environment. These two objectives will be addressed from several interdisciplinary perspectives and at several levels of automation technology, ranging from the facility automation to information and decision automation. Automation efforts, including coordinate measurement machines (CMM), and computer numerical control (CNC) machines at the facility level, computer aided design/computer aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) systems and integrated databases at the information level, and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies at the decision-making level, are proposed to facilitate the integration of automated inspection in flexible manufacturing systems.
