We use a B/W CCD camera and a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) to sense the mechanical part. A DRFSM implementation (see below) of a discrete event dynamic system (DEDS) algorithm is used to facilitate the state recovery of the inspection process. DEDS are suitable for modeling robotic observers as they provide a means for tracking the continuous, discrete and symbolic aspects of the scene under consideration [3,20,21]. Thus the DEDS controller will be able to model and report the state evolution of the inspection process.
In inspection, the DEDS guides the sensing machines to the parts of the objects where discrepancies occur between the real object (or a CAD model of it) and the recovered structure data points and/or parameters. The DEDS formulation also compensates for noise in the sensor readings (both ambiguities and uncertainties) using a probabilistic approach for computing the 3-D world parameters [26]. The recovered data from the sensing module is then used to drive the CAD module. The DEDS sensing agent is thus used to collect data of a passive element for designing structures; an exciting extension is to use a similar DEDS observer for moving agents and subsequently design behaviors through a learning stage.