Automotive powertrain component inspection, especially engine blocks, transmissions, and crankshafts, critically impacts vehicle performance, lifespan, and safety. These parts require exceptional structural strength and manufacturing precision, ensuring correct positioning, defect absence, and complete sub-component presence (e.g., screw holes, oil/cooling channels, mounts). Minute flaws like sand holes, cracks, machining errors, or missing assemblies can cause catastrophic failures (power loss, leaks, safety incidents).
Traditional manual inspection of powertrain parts is inefficient and error-prone due to human factors and limited coverage of complex structures. Delayed defect detection from lacking real-time feedback increases rework costs and brand risk. Consequently, robotic arm and machine vision Edge AI automated inspection systems are trending. These systems flexibly cover inspection points, enabling flaw detection, precision comparison, position verification, and sub-component completeness. Real-time inference and data feedback allow manufacturers to proactively control process quality, improving yield, enhancing production quality, and bolstering customer trust.
Within the intricate inspection of engine and powertrain components, the computing system serves as the core of the intelligent edge computing architecture, comprehensively driving the digitalization of quality management from sensing and inference to data feedback. The system is equipped with 14th/13th/12th Gen Intel® Core™ i9/i7/i5 processors, supports 128GB of DDR5 memory, and offers up to seven SATA 6.0Gb/s high-speed storage interfaces. It can be paired with a discrete graphics card (such as the RTX4070) to effortlessly process high-resolution image streams from multiple 3D vision inspection cameras.
The entire inspection process begins with the 3D vision inspection cameras, while the robotic arm agilely guides the cameras to critical areas within the complex cylinder block cavity, crankshaft surface, and transmission housing. Once the images are transmitted back to the edge inference system, it immediately performs defect classification, surface finish measurement, and screw hole position angle verification. Through the PCIe expansion motion control card interface within the edge inference system, the arm’s micrometer-level movements are precisely driven, ensuring accurate alignment of each inspection point.
When the system detects an anomaly (such as a sand hole, misaligned weld, or surface crack), it instantly marks the defect type and location and displays the inspection results on a LEAD Series HMI via a visual dashboard. This includes defective product classification statistics, real-time yield rate curves, and defect distribution heatmaps. Operators can make quick judgments based on system prompts, and the system can be configured to automatically feed abnormal data back to the edge inference system for continuous optimization of inference accuracy.
Furthermore, the industrial inspection lighting module is uniformly controlled via USB/GPIO, ensuring the switching of appropriate light intensity and angle at different inspection stages to enhance surface detail recognition. The overall communication architecture of the robotic arm utilizes EtherCAT/Profinet high-speed synchronous signal transmission, closely with the inference system, HMI, and sensing equipment to create a real-time responsive, high-precision intelligent quality inspection platform. This not only improves production yield and uptime but also accelerates the automotive parts manufacturing industry’s progress towards the smart factory goal.
Leveraging our extensive experience in DMS (Design and Manufacturing Services), we provide both standardized product platforms and tailored smart manufacturing solutions to meet the demands of a rapidly changing market. We offer comprehensive, one-stop service support, spanning from initial requirements analysis, custom hardware design, and firmware tuning to subsequent system integration, international certifications (such as CE/FCC/UL), and mass production delivery. Addressing the stringent requirements of automotive production lines for environmental resilience, long lifecycles, and high reliability, we can customize solutions to meet specific application needs, such as supporting IP protection ratings and wide operating temperature ranges, ensuring seamless customer deployment and peace of mind. In the context of ongoing advancements in AI edge computing, machine vision, and smart factories, we are not merely providers of embedded systems but also the optimal partner for the automotive industry’s transition towards smart manufacturing upgrades, collaborating with customers to create future competitive advantages.