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| Projects Dimensional Measurement Programming Data Acquisition and Analysist Vehicle Assembly Integration Modeling
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Intelligent Systems Program Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Program Manager: Fred Proctor Annual FTEs: 3.5 NIST staff 1.5 guest researcher 5 total FTEs Challenge: In a global economy with competition from developing countries that have much lower labor rates, innovation is America’s best hope to remain competitive. Innovation opens up new business opportunities and creates new ways to put people to work. Innovation means answering “what if,” and it ought to be easy to answer questions like “what if we could move our custom applications between robots from all our vendors? What if we can apply all our shop-floor measurement software to nano-level measurements? What if we could use the same data for cutting non-uniform materials that we use for modeling them?” The challenge is “How can we reduce the cost of innovation?” If manufacturers are bound by single-vendor stovepiped products, they will end up with single-use stovepiped innovation. Breaking free means being able to put together best-in-class products from niche technology vendors to build creative solutions, making it easier for U.S. manufacturers to innovate on the shop floor and deliver products found nowhere else at affordable costs. Enabling interoperability – putting it all together quickly and easily – is the goal of this program. The problem is hard because the factory floor is where engineers from many different disciplines come together in a tangle of incompatible equipment, and are tasked with making things work on tight schedules. The different disciplines have different perspectives on the information that is necessary; hence it is a tremendous challenge to determine which data are needed, and how to express them unambiguously and efficiently. The costs of lacking or incorrectly implemented interoperability solutions are significant. For example, Airbus attributes a $6.1B loss to interoperability failures. 1 Overview Standards are a prerequisite to interoperability between different vendors. Our role as a measurements and standards organization is to make standards better by working with manufacturers to 1) define correct, complete, and unambiguous standards, 2) define conformance tests for use in the certification of implementations, 3) perform public interoperability testing, and 4) publicize standards activities.” Specifically, validation means participating in pilot projects that demonstrate how well the standard helps connect robots, machine tools and measurement equipment together and to other parts of the enterprise. The pilot project scenarios highlight new and innovative manufacturing capabilities, and we measure results against metrics that show that the standard is doing what it promised to do. The outputs of this program will be better standards, paraphrasing BASF: “we don’t make the standards you use, we make the standards you use better.” The outcome will be an American manufacturing environment in which it is easy to pull together best-in-class pieces to build a world-class product. We recognize that integration architectures can extend the reach of data exchange standards, but this program is not proposing new architectures. Rather, we are working within architectures currently in place and accepted by our industrial partners, and focusing on standards that fit within them. We continually assess which standards have the most potential to enable innovation, so that our contributions matter. The metric is the degree of industry support from both manufacturing end users and automation vendors. End users need to believe that the standard will make it easier for them to innovate, and need to commit to buy products that support the standard. Vendors need to believe that adherence of their products to the standard will raise demand for them, and that the cost of supporting the standard will be paid back over a reasonable time. Why NIST? When companies believe that a standard is valuable to their businesses, they are willing to spend money to develop the standard. Often this is to ensure that their specific business interests are taken into account. However, the work that it takes to conduct test pilots, validate the standard and provide conformance tools provides benefits that accrue to all companies equally. No single company is willing to pay unequally for this. In some cases, companies pool their resources and set up an organization that is specifically funded to do the work, usually involving in-kind contributions from companies’ technical staff. In other cases, public agencies like NIST or NASA take on this role, allocating some of their discretionary funding. In this time of increasingly severe challenges faced by the U.S. manufacturing sector, NIST’s involvement is becoming the lifeblood of these important standards efforts. However, the lack of any funded or in-kind industrial group is a warning that the proposed standard lacks value and does not merit a one-sided public investment. In the projects proposed here, we are working with well-organized industry groups with substantial in-kind investment and some funded membership. Program ObjectivesConnected Robotics Having participated in the roadmapping exercise, our next step is to determine the measurements and standards needs to make connected robotics a reality, and to develop a project structure to respond to these needs in the medium term. Customers and Collaborators Standards for Quality Measurement Information
Customers and Collaborators www.us-robotics.us, “Manufacturing and Robotics and Automation Workshop,” June 2008. Projects Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Dimensional Measurement Programming Project The Dimensional Measurement Interface Specification (DMIS) is the only standard for dimensional measurement programming. DMIS defines information requirements and syntax for text-based, human-readable, and low-level inspection plans. DMIS is maintained and progressed within the DMIS Standards Committee of the Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium (DMSC). Recently the I++ group has offered the I++ DMS specification, which is intended to overlap DMIS. NIST is continuing a two-fold effort for the DMIS standard: Most importantly, NIST plans to work with the DMSC to enable a viable and useable DMIS Certification service, performed by a subcommittee of the DMSC (NOT by NIST), in order to seek to eliminate DMIS “flavors” in the various worldwide implementations of DMIS. Secondly, NIST will continue to provide increasingly complete DMIS conformance test utilities, for use in the certification process. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards I++ (Inspection plus-plus) Project The I++ group (Daimler, Audi, Volkswagen, Peugeot, BMW, Opel, and Volvo) has defined and is progressing the I++ DME and I++ DMS specifications. During that time, NIST has been developing versions of its I++ DME test suite, which until recently has kept up with the latest versions of I++ DME. The I++ DME committee has expressed a persistent interest in the NIST I++ DME test suite. The funding level for this project will not allow work on the test suite. However, public interoperability demos seem to be more important to support, so with reduced staffing, this is the only task on I++ DME. For I++ DMS, we need to do work of harmonization and interaction between the AIAG, the DMSC, and the I++ group, to ensure that our mutual work benefits U.S. manufacturers. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards QMD Project The AIAG MEPT QMD (Quality Measurement Data) working group has just recently realized adoption of the QMD version 1.0 specification by a critical mass of important Statistical Process Control software vendors, the key producers and consumers of quality measurement results data. NIST has played an important role in this success story. One of NIST’s roles is the development and use of the NIST QMD test suite. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards eQuiPP Project The eQuiPP (Exchange of Quality Measurement Process Plans) is a subcommittee of the DMSC, organized to define high-level measurement process plans for both off-line and in-process measurements. Several eQuiPP meetings have been held since May, 2007, about the same time that a call went forth for such a standard. Since that time NIST has defined early versions of eQuiPP: for dimensional measurement data only 1) in the STEP modeling language, integrated within STEPNC, and 2) in the UML modeling language. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Scan Data Project Collecting clouds of points with 3D imaging systems is increasingly being done on the manufacturing shop floor to perform high-throughput metrology, sometimes in the performance of tasks typically performed by coordinate measuring machiness. Not surprisingly, as this practice has increased, multiple, incompatible information definitions and formats have proliferated. There has been a call from some in the industry for an information exchange standard (or standards) in this area. For example, the AIAG’s Scan Data Working Group has made such a call. At the last Scan Data meeting (in FY07), multiple representatives from each of Chrysler, GM, and Ford attended. The ASTM’s committee E57 on 3D Imaging Systems has a subcommittee E57.04 on “Data Interoperability.” However, E57 is currently limited to 3D devices such as laser scanners (also known as LADAR or laser radars) and optical range cameras. It is not clear that the “metrology” interest of the AIAG is in harmony with the simpler “range measurement” requirements of the 3D imaging community. Generally, metrologists are keenly interested in collecting measurements, generating actual features, and comparing measured features with nominal features in some way, whereas, users of range measurements are typically less concerned with comparing actuals to nominals, but merely use the 3D data to perform things like object recognition and pose estimation for tasks like obstacle avoidance or part assembly. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards DML Project The Dimensional Markup Language (DML) is a standard for representing measurement results, sponsored by the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG). Through a Memorandum of Understandingsigned by the AIAG and the DMSC, DML has now been transferred to a subcommittee under the DMSC. NIST’s job is to help the DMSC progress DML to a formal standard. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Standards Enabling “Smart Data For Intelligent Manufacturing” Adaptive Control Project Machining parameters such as feed rate and spindle speed are typically computed from conservative tables that result in longer-than-optimal cycle times. Off-line optimization can help reduce cycle times, but the off-line method can’t respond to actual cutting conditions like tool wear. Techniques exist for on-line (real-time) optimization using sensed values of spindle power, vibration and other quantities, but these work only when there is sufficient data about what values should be expected. The second edition of STEP-NC includes this information; this project will validate that the data is sufficient. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:
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Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Data Acquisition and Analysis Project Data Acquisition and Analysis Project Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:
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Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Shop Floor Integration Project
Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards CNC-ERP Connectivity Project CNC-ERP Connectivity Project Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:
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Intelligent Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Vehicle Assembly Integration Modeling Manufacturing companies are targeting to use an industry standard common communication protocol such as OPC-UA to transfer standard information between devices and production systems. Standard data can improve production by allowing better decision support for diagnostic status, maintenance and fault recovery. Standard data will allow for a better understanding of the vehicle assembly process to allow lean manufacturing to reduce waste, create a more robust process, and increase flexibility. NIST will assist in the development and validation of a vehicle assembly Information Model. Deliverables and Intermediate Milestones:
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