Integrating visual feedback and a vision agent into the telemanufacturing environment.

The automated fabrication of a prototype three-dimensional part from a three-dimensional drawing can be regarded as rapid prototyping. There are two basic types of rapid prototyping: subtractive fabrication and additive fabrication. Subtractive fabrication begins with a block of material that is larger than the object to be created and “sculpts” the block into the required prototype three-dimensional part. Additive fabrication continuously adds particles to an object until the desired object is created. Often this process builds a prototype three-dimensional part layer by layer. The prototype three-dimensional parts are created by particular rapid prototyping hardware. Telemanufacturing allows for the remote submission of three-dimensional drawings via a communication medium to the site where the rapid prototyping machine resides. The communication medium for the purposes of this dissertation is the Internet. After the three-dimensional drawing is submitted to the remote site, the rapid prototyping machine proceeds to create the prototype three-dimensional part. The aim of this research is to integrate a visual feedback system into the telemanufacturing environment. The visual feedback system allows a user at a remote location to view the progress of the manufacture of the prototype three-dimensional part in real time. This research also aims to integrate a software agent into the telemanufacturing environment. An agent is loosely defined as “one that acts for another”. The software agent discussed in this dissertation will analyze visual data obtained from the rapid prototyping environment, determine if the prototype three-dimensional part being created contains errors, and take the necessary action. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to allow the visual analysis of a part as a rapid prototyping machine is creating it. This research allows for two approaches to this “visual analysis”: human analysis, and analysis by a software agent. The “visual analysis” will detect any errors that have occurred during the manufacturing process and ultimately result in the reduction of time and resources to create prototype three dimensional parts using telemanufacturing.Prof. E.M. Ehler