The BMW Group plant in Regensburg is the first plant in the automotive industry worldwide to use an end-to-end digitized and automated process for inspecting, processing and marking painted vehicle surfaces in series production. The novelty: AI-controlled robots process each vehicle individually according to objective quality standards. Data stored in the cloud enables optimum analysis of the cause-and-effect relationships - and thus represents a further step by the BMW Group toward the digital and intelligently networked factory known as the BMW iFactory.

Painting, sanding, polishing - with artificial intelligence

Four robots stand in the processing booth, a freshly painted car body in their midst. As if on command, the robots begin to work on the surface of the body. They sand, apply polishing paste, polish, change the attachments and renew the sandpaper. Cameras follow the scenario. "The special thing is that the robots process each car body exactly where it is needed. This is because the tiny inclusions or unevenness that can occur after the topcoat process and that we want to eliminate are in a different place on each vehicle," explains Stefan Auflitsch, Head of Production Paint Application and Finish at the BMW Group plant in Regensburg. "Normally, you program robots to always run the same pattern until they are reprogrammed again. By using artificial intelligence, the robots now work in a customized manner. With up to 1,000 vehicles that we send through the finish in a workday, that's also 1,000 unique sequences."

Automated surface finishing, or AOB for short, has been in series production at the BMW Group plant in Regensburg since March 2022. To ensure it runs smoothly, another automated process is upstream: Automated Surface Inspection, or AOI for short, first identifies and records the features to be machined after the top coat. In Automated Surface Inspection, the system first identifies the deviating features using deflectometry, registering the locations that deviate from the ideal and transferring them directly to the connected computer system. The computer stores the exact location, shape and size of the feature, constructs a digital 3D image from the data and classifies it based on objective criteria. Automated surface processing not only processes all captured features in the optimal sequence and speed, but also always with the same processing quality.

However, there are also limits to the use of robots. For example, they cannot process the edges of the body or the last millimeters next to door and other joints. The fuel filler flap is also too fragile. And so, in the final stage, it is the trained employees who apply the final touches and remove the bodywork. The BMW Group plant in Regensburg is the first plant to use the three-stage automated process in series production. A rollout to other plants is currently being investigated. Here, too, the previously recorded data comes into play, as a laser projector digitally marks the respective points on the body surface.