Making electric vehicle batteries safer through better inspection using artificial intelligence and cobots

High quality, safe, and reliable batteries are essential for widespread adoption of electric vehicles. Current Li-ion battery pack manufacturing processes rely on manual inspections to ensure electric vehicle battery quality. Such manual quality control is prone to errors, increasing the chances of defective batteries. This is likely to increase safety and reliability concerns in the public imagination, slowing down the adoption of electric vehicles. Furthermore, manual inspection is time-consuming and likely to become a bottleneck in scaling up electric vehicle battery production. A potential solution to address this need for fast and accurate inspection of batteries is the use of machine vision and robotics. In this study, we use digital twin design and simulation to develop a battery module inspection system that uses cobots and machine vision to inspect electric vehicle batteries for defects. Our proposed system can automate visual quality checks that are currently being done by human operators. The proposed cobotic system has been simulated and validated for a variety of battery defects to achieve fast and reliable detection. Since a digital twin of the cobotic inspection workcell has been used, the battery inspection system, as designed and validated, is ready for immediate implementation.