AI revolutionises manual production line

The AMRC has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based quality inspection system that is helping one of Britain’s leading automotive companies detect faults in its production line in seconds.

Leyland Trucks in Lancashire, which can trace its truck-building heritage back 130 years, had used a labour-intensive process to manually identify defects, requiring highly experienced craftsmen to move alongside chassis suspended from a conveyor.

As part of a new no-fault forward approach to its production line, the company worked with the AMRC to develop an AI-based inspection system which could spot manufacturing and assembly defects as they occur, eliminating them before the trucks roll out of the factory gates.

The AMRC developed a high-speed machine vision pipeline that can collect video and image frames from multiple camera feeds, and transport them to a powerful AI platform. The AI model can count and report the number of specific components within seconds, instantly identifying any missing parts.

It offers consistent performance, operating efficiently without fatigue and is expected to considerably reduce the number of faults progressing further along Leyland’s production line.