AI-Driven Collaborative Assembly Line Inspection: System Integration and Deployment Challenges

Abstract:Manual visual inspection on assembly lines is a persistent manufacturing bottleneck: operator fatigue over extended shifts lowers defect-detection rates. This paper presents the design, integration, and field deployment of an AI-assisted collaborative inspection cell at the Silverline kitchen-appliance factory, developed within the AI-PRISM project. The cell couples a Universal Robots UR 10e cobot carrying a machine-vision defect-detection pipeline with a Comau Racer-5 cobot for functional tests, coordinated through ROS 2 Humble on an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS server. Multi-modal data (Basler camera imagery, TIA microphone acoustics, and SPS electrical-safety measurements) are logged locally and visualised in real time with Grafana. We report the practical deployment challenges (close-proximity safety, AI robustness under glare and reflections, ROS 2 namespace collisions across two cobots, and operating-system and dependency issues) together with the engineering solutions adopted, and structure the integration through a four-level Human-Robot Interaction analysis. The deployed cell cuts per-unit quality-check time from 82 s to 61 s (about 25%), raises final-control resource efficiency from 0.75 to 0.88, reduces operator visual-inspection viewing time by 82%, and significantly lowers operator mental demand (p = 0.005, NASA-TLX).

13 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables. Accepted at the 22nd International Conference on Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems (MobiWIS 2026)

Robotics (cs.RO); Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV); Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC)

arXiv:2609.33522 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2609.33522v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.33522 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.