A Robot System Which Acquires Cylindrical Workpieces from Bins

The feasibility of robots employing vision to acquire randomly oriented cylinders has been demonstrated for the first time. An experimental robot system using vision and a parallel jaw gripper was able to acquire randomly oriented cylindrical workpieces piled in bins. Binary image analysis was adequate to guide the gripper into the multilayered, piles. Complementary information was provided by simple sensors on the gripper. Experiments were performed using titanium cylinders 6 cm × 15 cm diameter and 7.6 cm × 3 cm diameter. Cycle times to acquire a cylinder and deliver it to a receiving chute ranged from 8 to 10 s when a single supply of one-size cylinders was used. By using a dual supply bin configuration with one bin of each size and overlapping arm motion and image analysis tasks, the cycle times for one cylinder from alternate bins ranged from 5.5 to 7.5 s per piece. In the future robots with such capabilities can be applied to enhance automation applications, especially in small batch production.