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Artificial Intelligence and Its Role in Improving Automated Optical Inspection
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Authored By:Edward Pechin ViTrox Americas, Inc TX, USA SummaryArtificial Intelligence (AI) in manufacturing is becoming more necessary to stay competitive, especially in the United States where labor cost is increasing year over year. AI that can think, feel, and act in a way that is parallel to humans is becoming invaluable and is also in high demand. The evolution of AI programming will almost certainly surpass human capability to develop accurate programs quickly and without error. The need for this in our industry certainly makes this a priority for a lot of vendors. In my presentation I’d like to discuss AI and its usefulness and absolute necessity in developing and improving AOI programs. The utilization of AI in AOI programming has become increasingly important in our industry. To be able to complete programs using Smart Programming to save time and free up Engineering resources is a necessity. The continued improvement and development of this AI to debug and Quality check programs will become an ever-important tool that can start to level the playing field for a lot of US manufacturers. The ability to review and classify defects is another integral role AI can play in reducing labor costs. Being able to utilize AI that you can reliably count on to make decisions and be more efficient than human inspectors is incredibly powerful. AI Review that provides feedback toward the AOI machine to improve AOI programs can cut down and eventually eliminate false calls and program escapes. This in turn will dramatically improve yields and throughput for all manufacturing companies. ConclusionsAI is or will become necessary in the high mix low volume production scenario that most of us are tasked with maintaining. With the help of AI we hope to ease the workload of engineering and operation teams while also improving labor cost, efficiency, and product quality. After reviewing the four AI use cases presented in this paper, it is very apparent the overwhelming benefit AI can have with our AOI process and programs. Auto programming to help with tedious pilot program part training. AI Quality checks to double check our programs and make sure they have 100% coverage and are robust as possible. AI Fine tuning for those cumbersome vendor changes and slight variations in part sizes. Finally, AI Review to help our inspection operators navigate through the tumultuous amount of noise to find the one, or more, true defect. Are any of these AI use cases perfected? As an AOI programmer, do I need to go out and find a new occupation or career? Not yet, and to be honest not by a long shot. Today, AI should be used more like a tool. It won’t do the job for us but it can certainly assist us in our daily tasks. Usually, you the end user will help to perfect each use of AI. Whether it is related to AOI or any other process, AI needs human interaction to improve and evolve. Companies like Vitrox have entire teams dedicated to the R&D of AI so it will continue to improve daily. It will have a huge place in almost every industry in our future. Why not utilize it in our industry today? Initially Published in the SMTA Proceedings |
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