Network-based Vision Guidance of Robot for Remote Quality Control

A current trend for manufacturing industry is shorter product life cycle, remote monitoring/control/diagnosis, product miniaturization, high precision, zero-defect manufacturing and information-integrated distributed production systems for enhanced efficiency and product quality (Cohen, 1997; Bennis et al., 2005; Goldin et al., 1998; Goldin et al., 1999; Kwon et al., 2004). In tomorrow’s factory, design, manufacturing, quality, and business functions will be fully integrated with the information management network (SME, 2001; Center for Intelligent Maintenance Systems, 2005). This new paradigm is coined with the term, e-manufacturing. In short, ‘‘e-manufacturing is a system methodology that enables the manufacturing operations to successfully integrate with the functional objectives of an enterprise through the use of Internet, tether-free (wireless, web, etc.) and predictive technologies” (Koc et al., 2002; Lee, 2003). In fact, the US Integrated Circuit (IC) chip fabrication industries routinely perform remote maintenance and monitoring of production equipment installed in other countries (Iung, 2003; Rooks, 2003). For about the past decades, semiconductor manufacturing industry prognosticators have been predicting that larger wafers will eventually lead the wafer fabrication facilities to become fully automated and that the factories will be operated “lights out”, i.e., with no humans in the factory. Those predictions have now become a reality. Intel’s wafer fabrication facilities in Chandler, Arizona, USA, are now controlled remotely and humans only go inside the facility to fix the problems. All operators and supervisors now work in a control room, load/unload wafers 25