A Synthetic Data Pipeline for Supporting Manufacturing SMEs in Visual Assembly Control

Quality control of assembly processes is essential in manufacturing to ensure not only the quality of individual components but also their proper integration into the final product. To assist in this matter, automated assembly control using computer vision methods has been widely implemented. However, the costs associated with image acquisition, annotation, and training of computer vision algorithms pose challenges for integration, especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which often lack the resources for extensive training, data collection, and manual image annotation. Synthetic data offers the potential to reduce manual data collection and labeling. Nevertheless, its practical application in the context of assembly quality remains limited. In this work, we present a novel approach for easily integrable and data-efficient visual assembly control. Our approach leverages simulated scene generation based on computer-aided design (CAD) data and object detection algorithms. The results demonstrate a time-saving pipeline for generating image data in manufacturing environments, achieving a mean Average Precision (mAP@0.5:0.95) up to 99,5% for correctly identifying instances of synthetic planetary gear system components within our simulated training data, and up to 93% when transferred to real-world camera-captured testing data. This research highlights the effectiveness of synthetic data generation within an adaptable pipeline and underscores its potential to support SMEs in implementing resource-efficient visual assembly control solutions.