Respiratory disease is the leading cause of death in the UK. Methods for assessing pulmonary function and chest wall movement are essential for accurate diagnosis, as well as monitoring response to treatment, operative procedures and rehabilitation. Despite this, there is a lack of low-cost devices for rapid assessment. Spirometry is used to measure air flow expired, but cannot infer or directly measure full chest wall motion. This paper presents the development of a low-cost chest wall motion assessment system. The prototype was developed using four Microsoft Kinect sensors to create a 3D time-varying representation of a patient’s torso. An evaluation of the system in two phases is also presented. Initially, static volume of a resuscitation mannequin with that of a Nikon laser scanner is performed. This showed the system has slight underprediction of 0.441 %. Next, a dynamic analysis through the comparison of results from the prototype and a spirometer in nine cystic fibrosis patients and thirteen healthy subjects was performed. This showed an agreement with correlation coefficients above 0.8656 in all participants. The system shows promise as a method for assessing respiratory disease in a cost-effective and timely manner. Further work must now be performed to develop the prototype and provide further evaluations.

No abstract

X-ray computed tomography (CT) offers significant potential as a metrological tool, given the wealth of internal and external data that can be captured, much of which is inaccessible to conventional optical and tactile coordinate measurement machines (CMM). Typical lab-based CT can take upwards of 30 min to produce a 3D model of an object, making it unsuitable for volume production inspection applications. Recently a new generation of real time tomography (RTT) x-ray CT has been developed for airport baggage inspections, utilising novel electronically switched x-ray sources instead of a rotating gantry. This enables bags to be scanned in a few seconds and 3D volume images produced in almost real time for qualitative assessment to identify potential threats. Such systems are able to scan objects as large as 600 mm in diameter at 500 mm s −1 . The current voxel size of such a system is approximately 1 mm-much larger than lab-based CT, but with significantly faster scan times is an attractive prospect to explore. This paper will examine the potential of such systems for real time metrological inspection of additively manufactured parts. The measurement accuracy of the Rapiscan RTT110, an RTT airport baggage scanner, is evaluated by comparison to measurements from a metrologically confirmed CMM and those achieved by conventional lab-CT. It was found to produce an average absolute error of 0.18 mm that may already have some applications in the manufacturing line. While this is expectedly a greater error than labbased CT, a number of adjustments are suggested that could improve resolution, making the technology viable for a broader range of in-line quality inspection applications, including cast and additively manufactured parts.

The increasing interest towards intelligent systems has led to a demand for the development of zero-defect strategies, with a paradigm shift from off-line and dedicated to inline metrology with integrated robotic systems. However, a major barrier preventing the systematic uptake of in-line metrology is the lack of evaluation of system capability in terms of accuracy, repeatability and measurement time, when compared to the well-established coordinate measuring machine (CMM). In this study, a robotic Laser Radar (LR) solution is assessed in the context of automotive dimensional inspection of Body-In-White (BIW) applications. The objective is both to understand the effect of robot re-positioning error on measurement accuracy and repeatability and to compare measurement results against a CMM. Eighty-one surface points, six edge points, twenty-five holes and sixteen slots were selected from an industry standard measurement plan. Whilst LR exhibits a lower measurement accuracy than twin-column CMM, its repeatability is well within the specification limits for body shell quality inspection. Therefore, as a real-time in-line metrology tool, it is a genuine prospect to exploit. This research makes a significant contribution toward in-line metrology for dimensional inspection, for automotive application, for rapid detection and for correction of assembly defects in real time, with subsequent reduction of scrap and number of repairs/re-works.

Benchmarking competitor products helps a company to identify opportunities to improve their product relative to their competitors. This allows a company to determine the basic requirements of a new product, and target potential areas for improvement, particularly within the automotive industry where there is considerable growth and competition. Automotive firms have been increasingly focusing on development processes. Reducing time to market and improving quality whilst minimising cost. Laser scanning technology enables companies to make design and engineering improvements through the ability to analyse a competitor’s design. A case study of this generic process will be presented in this paper. The results have revealed that a company can create significant value-added activity, reduce the need for physical prototype costs and time, improve quality in new product development introduction.

Multi-sensor coordinate measuring machines (CMM) have a potential performance advantage over existing CMM systems by offering the accuracy of a touch trigger probe with the speed of a laser scanner. Before these systems can be used, it is important that both random and systematic errors are evaluated within the context of its intended application. At present, the performance of a multisensor CMM, particularly of the laser scanner, has not been evaluated within an automotive environment. This study used a full-scale CNC machined physical representation of a sheet metal vehicle body to evaluate the measurement agreement and repeatability of critical surface points using a multi-sensor horizontal dual arm CMM. It was found that there were errors between CMM arms and with regard to part coordinate frame construction when using the different probing systems. However, the most significant effect upon measurement error was the spatial location of the surface feature. Therefore, for each feature on an automotive assembly, measurement agreement and repeatability has to be individually determined to access its acceptability for measurement with a laser scanner to improve CMM utilisation, or whether the accuracy of a touch trigger probe is required.

Please refer to published version for the most recent bibliographic citation information. If a published version is known of, the repository item page linked to above, will contain details on accessing it.

The popularity of composite materials is continuously growing with new varieties being developed and tested with different machining processes to establish their suitability. Destructive as well as non-destructive methods, such as ultrasonics, X-ray radiography and eddy-current, have previously been used to ensure that the combination of particular machining methods and composites provide the required quality that can allow the required lifespan of the final product. X-ray computed tomography (CT) is applied as a novel method in this paper to obtain quantitative data about the inner and outer structures of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) drilled holes providing more information than any other non-contact and non-destructive evaluation. This is combined with precise measurements from optical CMM and image processing for a full analysis for the entire part. This method can provide accurate measurements for all the layers of the CFRP and very little interaction from the operator minimising the human error. The method complies with VDI/VDE 2630 standard and the quality of the acquired measurements is assured. The results can assist in establishing the best machining process, provide accurate measurements of diameter, circularity and positioning of the hole and information about delaminated areas.