Car-Building Robots with Laser Eyes Can “See” Exactly Where to Place Parts for Custom-Like Fit

New car building robots can "see" where to place parts (Photos: Ford)

Assembly line robots that are programmed to build cars by placing parts in exactly the same place every time are no longer tech cool. You know what is tech cool?  Assembly line robots with laser eyes that can see where parts need to go, adjust themselves to even the slightest variations in positioning, and custom fit each placement.

An army of these new “seeing” robots has been installed at Ford‘s Louisville Assembly Plant to install Instrument panels, windshields, roofs and fenders on the all-new Ford Escape, and they can adjust to any variations in positioning as each Escape rolls across the line to be fitted with its parts.

The machines are programmed to recognize any tiny deviation from specification such as gaps between door panels or between the windshield and the vehicle body.

“The ability of the machines to register any difference in each vehicle on the line improves our quality by providing a custom-like build,” said Thomas Burns, an engineer who works with the technology for the Escape. This results in things like door panels that fit tighter, reducing wind noise inside the cabin.

These new robots not only improve accuracy and deliver higher standards of build quality, but they save us humans from physical strain and injury due to repetitive motion. According to Marty Smets, an ergonomics engineer, “We also have a variety of semi-autonomous robots, which do tasks that aren’t safe for humans to do repetitively.”

A robot like the Instrumentation Panel Robot (that, not surprisingly, installs the instrumentation panel), performs a task that isn’t safe for humans to do repetitively, while also improving the build quality and maximizing gap seals for that part.

In the paint shop, 88 new robots reduce energy costs by more efficiently applying paint and sealer inside the body and to the exterior of the vehicle. Keeping humans out of the zones where the paint is applied reduces airflow and climate control requirements thereby saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.

Ford has more than 700 robots at the Louisville Assembly Plant assisting in the build of the body and interior of the all-new Escape. And as they begin to “see” and decide where to place parts, how long before humans are no longer needed on the line at all?

Not that I want anyone to lose their job, but I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Meet RUTH, the Touchy Feely Robot That Pokes Car Interiors For a Living (Video)

RUTH pokes and prods car interiors checking for comfort and quality (Photos: Ford Motor Company)

RUTH isn’t the ideal passenger. She’ll spend the entire time poking the seats, pushing all the buttons and flicking the air conditioner vents back and forth. She’s like a sugared-up 5-year-old, only instead of candy she’s powered by electrical wires, and instead of being annoying because she’s bored, she’s just doing her job.

RUTH is a robot. Her full name is the Robotized Unit for Tactility and Haptics. And she’s designed to tell car makers when the materials in their vehicles have just the right amount of softness, roughness, temperature, hardness and comfort that we as customers want. So earlier this year, Ford brought RUTH from Europe to their Michigan product development center to help them create cars with just the right amount of everything we want in a car’s interior materials.

See RUTH in action

“Quality” can be difficult to express, yet when we sit in a high-end car, we know by the feel of the trim and the touch of the buttons that the car is special and well-crafted. The sense of touch and the intuitive understanding of quality are innately human characteristics, but how do you measure them? How do you quantify something like seat comfort or a “satisfying” button push?

“Before RUTH, many engineers had access only to hand-held measuring tools, and no means to test the interiors in a manner that resembled in-vehicle scenarios,” says Luke Robinson, Ford metrologist and RUTH technician. “An engineer outside of our department might even have pushed a dictionary and a pop can into an armrest to measure its resistance and softness.”

RUTH and engineer Luke Robinson test a seat's comfort

Now, with this new technology, Ford has taken data from decades of worldwide consumer feedback and entered them into RUTH. Then RUTH takes her giant, 6-jointed, robotic arm and pokes the trims, turns the knobs, pushes the buttons and interacts with many of the vehicle’s interior areas in the same way a person would. She then “tells” the engineers which option is the best and finest, and Ford puts it into production. This allows Ford to tailor each vehicle interior to exactly what a customer group wants.

The result is the ability to put high-end products into cars faster, with less testing time, allowing them to be more affordable and within reach of a larger group of customers. And for that, we’ll put up with a little poking and prodding.