Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Heliene, Inc. is a manufacturer of high-quality photovoltaic modules for use in the solar power industry. The Solar Power Generation industry in Canada and the US is going through a growth phase and Heliene would like to stay competitive in this industry by continuing to develop and expand its fully automated facility where these photovoltaic modules are produced. Since photovoltaic solar modules are a sophisticated technological product, the Heliene facility has been developed to include a high level of automation, with the assembly line combining robotics and on-line continuous monitoring. Currently, the photovoltaic modules, or ""strings"" as they are referred to, are placed onto the glass panels using a robot. The robot's placement is subject to further manual adjustment as the strings pickup position tends to shift and move prior to being picked up by the robot. This movement results in the strings not being placed accurately onto the glass panels and subsequently have to be adjusted by line workers prior to being soldered together.The collaborative project with Sault College will involve using a vision camera and custom software to capture the position of the strings as they are located in the gripper of the robot. The vision camera will then transfer the lateral and rotational offsets of the strings to the robot. The robot will then apply these offsets which will result in the strings being placed on the glass more accurately requiring no manual intervention prior to soldering. This will result in faster throughput of the entire process and a better quality product. Sault College's robot lab is ideally setup for this project will allow us to use similar industrial robots to Helienes' as well as utilize our vision cameras and software to conduct a proof of concept project.