SurfSense - Flexible optical measurement system for high precision geometric quality control of complex industrial parts
On 1 January 2025, IDM-Systems Zrt. launched its largest R&D project aimed at automated, reliable and documented quality control of workpieces with complex geometric shapes in industrial production. The project is funded by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office with 437.5 million HUF, with a planned completion date of 31 December 2026, followed by a two-year maintenance period.
Measurement challenges in industrial environments
Optical measurement in an industrial environment faces many geometric challenges:
- Occlusions and shadow effects: beam-based sensors cannot accurately measure hidden or hard-to-reach surfaces.
- Internal dimensions, recesses: closed or inaccessible geometries often cannot be inspected with conventional tools.
- Lack of surface perpendicularity: it is critical for measurement accuracy that the sensor is nearly perpendicular to the surface - this is not always possible with fixed installation systems.
- System trade-offs in the solutions available on the market: currently available industrial measurement systems often require product-specific sensor placement or custom configuration. When introducing a new product or modifying an existing measurement plan, these new requirements can be difficult to accommodate and redesigning the measurement process can be time-consuming and costly. Lack of flexibility limits the scope for automation and scalability.
The SurfSense solution
SurfSense is a universal, software-based framework that allows any common optical sensor used in industrial practice for measurement (e.g. snapshot sensor) to cover the entire surface of the workpiece and take optimal positions for measurement. The system is hardware-independent, allowing flexible integration with existing kinematic (even robotic) and sensor infrastructures.
Main components of the solution
- CAD-based measurement plan compilation
- Automatic path generation for kinematics in motion
- Creating a point cloud from the sensor scan
- Automatic evaluation of geometric conformity
The range of users
SurfSense is designed for discrete manufacturing companies where product geometries are complex and varied, and inline automation of quality control is a priority - for example in the automotive, mechanical engineering, electronics or any custom manufacturing process. The target group includes quality control engineers, production planners, process engineers, and analysts of measurement data integrated into enterprise management systems.
Innovation and industrial integration
SurfSense not only automates the measurement process, but can also be directly integrated with shop floor controls (PLC) and higher level enterprise systems (MES, MOM, LIMS).
Tailored to the industrial environment, the scalable and modular solution significantly reduces quality control time, increases accuracy, provides a documented and traceable control process, while allowing for future expansion, integration of new sensor types or measurement strategies.
