Vision guides robots to automate unpacking

Citation

(2002), "Vision guides robots to automate unpacking", Industrial Robot, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2002.04929caf.009

Vision guides robots to automate unpacking

Vision guides robots to automate unpacking

Keywords: Vision, Robots

Grude Systems GmbH of Sauerlach, Germany has combined off-the-shelf Sony cameras with Cognex frame grabbers and Staubli robots to automate the unloading and reloading of bearings and wheel mounts for FAG Automotive of Schweinfurt, Germany. The Grude developed system replaces a manual unpacking/repacking process (Plate 9).

Plate 9 Vision guides robot

The vision system locates each bearing in a shipping carton and directs a robot to unpack the bearings and place one at a time on to a conveyor. The vision directed robot also unpacks randomly oriented wheel-mounts and places them in an oriented manner onto a second conveyor. The two conveyors feed an assembly cell. On completion of the assembly process, a third conveyor delivers the finished wheel mount bearing assembly to a second robot which packs into a shipping container.

The PC-based system communicates between vision and robot controllers over a PCI bus. The robots are Stäubli RX130L controlled by Adept Technology PC-based controllers. The vision system is based on the Sony C75CE cameras and the Cognex 8100X frame grabbers and uses Cognex PatMax software.

For more information visit the Web sites: www.grudesysteme.de www.adept.com www.staubli.com www.cognex.com