  The manufacturing industry is currently witnessing a paradigm shift with the
unprecedented adoption of industrial robots, and machine vision is a key
perception technology that enables these robots to perform precise operations
in unstructured environments. However, the sensitivity of conventional vision
sensors to lighting conditions and high-speed motion sets a limitation on the
reliability and work-rate of production lines. Neuromorphic vision is a recent
technology with the potential to address the challenges of conventional vision
with its high temporal resolution, low latency, and wide dynamic range. In this
paper and for the first time, we propose a novel neuromorphic vision based
controller for faster and more reliable machining operations, and present a
complete robotic system capable of performing drilling tasks with
sub-millimeter accuracy. Our proposed system localizes the target workpiece in
3D using two perception stages that we developed specifically for the
asynchronous output of neuromorphic cameras. The first stage performs
multi-view reconstruction for an initial estimate of the workpiece's pose, and
the second stage refines this estimate for a local region of the workpiece
using circular hole detection. The robot then precisely positions the drilling
end-effector and drills the target holes on the workpiece using a combined
position-based and image-based visual servoing approach. The proposed solution
is validated experimentally for drilling nutplate holes on workpieces placed
arbitrarily in an unstructured environment with uncontrolled lighting.
Experimental results prove the effectiveness of our solution with an average
positional errors of less than 0.1 mm, and demonstrate that the use of
neuromorphic vision overcomes the lighting and speed limitations of
conventional cameras.
