Israel-based smart inspection planning company Kitov.ai has been named a VISION award finalist for its CAD2SCAN software, which significantly simplifies setup of robotic inspection systems using CAD-based automated inspection planning. The winner will be announced on Oct. 5, 2022, during a special award ceremony to be held during the VISION show in Stuttgart, Germany.
“We couldn’t be more pleased with this acknowledgment by the VISION award committee of the necessity to have CAD-based automatic inspection planning,” said Dr. Yossi Rubner, founder and CTO of Kitov.ai. “The CAD2SCAN technology expands the capabilities of our software platform and allows the complete automation of product inspection from the CAD to the actual manufacturing line.”
CAD2SCAN is the latest feature of the Kitov Smart Planner. By combining CAD2SCAN with Kitov’s automated planning and inspection software platform, customers can automate inspection solutions that are too difficult and time-consuming to manually program and deploy. Particularly useful for parts with complex geometries, CAD2SCAN allows quality managers to define their inspection requirements directly on the part CAD model, saving weeks or even months compared to manual programming.
CAD2SCAN automatically extracts the specific geometric and semantic information for each inspection requirement marked on the CAD. This information is passed on to the relevant semantic detectors performing the inspection tasks. In addition to built-in semantic detectors such as surface detector, label detector, screw detector, and existence detector, Kitov.ai’s open software platform allows easy integration of third-party detectors that benefit from the planning and reporting services provided by the platform. CAD2SCAN also optimizes the inspection plan with accuracy and throughput in mind, guaranteeing full coverage while reducing robot motion and the number of images needed to cover all regions of interest, minimizing the total inspection time.
Automatic CAD-based inspection planning is a game-changer for industries that manufacture complex parts and products. For example, CAD2SCAN technology improves the inspection of single-material parts with complex 3D geometric shapes, such as turbine engines, blades, wheels, and metal molding; CNC parts, which are difficult and time-consuming to fully inspect manually; and custom-made or other low-volume parts (such as medical implants or 3D-printed parts), which involve processes that are extremely hard, as well as not economical, to automate.
CAD2SCAN technology is implemented as a plugin to common CAD software systems (currently available for SolidWorks and Creo). It also supports the evolving QIF (Quality Information Framework) ISO standard and can parse visual inspection requirements embedded into it.
