COMPOSE

The COMPOSE project investigates new approaches to process monitoring in production systems under conditions of extreme resource scarcity, such as those expected in future manufacturing processes on Mars. Within the framework of the “The Martian Mindset” cluster of excellence, it is assumed that available resources such as energy, sensor technology, weight, space requirements, and reference standards are severely limited. At the same time, sufficient product quality (“enough-to-use quality”) is required for functional components. In order to reliably achieve this quality under the given constraints, suitable monitoring of the manufacturing processes and workpiece conditions is necessary.

The goal of COMPOSE is to develop a reconfigurable, robot-assisted, multi-purpose measurement system that can capture various geometry-related measurement variables with as few optical measurement modules as possible. Instead of highly specialized individual measuring devices, a flexible monitoring toolbox concept is to be pursued, in which a few basic components – in particular lighting and camera modules – can be used for different measurement tasks through different configurations and evaluation algorithms. Robotic positioning and reconfiguration of the measurement components will enable different measurement principles to be implemented, for example to determine positions, shapes, surface structures, and derived variables such as deformations and forces.