Starting out with VGR

For many engineers it’s the bin picking problem that first leads them in to Vision Guided Robotics, or VGR for short. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” they think to themselves, “to have a robot pick castings, (or forgings or molded parts,) from a bin and load them in to the next machine.”

Well yes, it would be nice, but it’s also quite difficult to do. If you’re just starting to think about such a VGR application let me refer you to this excellent primer, written by David Dechow of Aptura Machine Vision Solutions, and published in Vision & sensors, April 29, 2009.

Careful study of David’s paper may lead you to think that it might be cheaper maintain control of each part you produce, rather than jumbling them in a bin and then spending a lot of money to sort them out again. Don’t get me wrong; I love the technology, but a good engineer should always be looking for the easiest way to achieve his objective, and as David teaches us, VGR ain’t easy.