Communication architecture for multiple distributed large volume metrology systems

The latest approaches for flexible assembly and process-integrated quality control of large components require global metrologic reference systems for various tasks, e.g. navigation of mobile transport units, control of cooperating robots or local inspection with handheld devices. While cooperative and competitive approaches for data fusion of multi-sensor metrologic systems already exist, a reference architecture to implement multi-sensor metrology on the shop floor has not been defined yet. The authors propose a three-layer model consisting of an interface to the sensor systems, a middle layer managing the allocation and transition between the individual devices and a top layer representing the user interface. A first prototype using OPC-UA, Python and HTML5/Javascript has been successfully implemented.