Sunday, June 10, 2012

Vision guidance example


Robots are so dumb they expect the object they’re to pick up to be in the same position every time. Exactly the same position. That means the object has to be fixtured. All well and good if you’re only processing a single reference, but what if you run multiple similar products through the same machine? Fixtures can become really expensive. Plus they have to be stored someplace when not in use.

The alternative is to tell the robot where it has to go each time. That’s the reasoning behind “Build better machines with machine vision,” on the Control Engineering website (April 2nd, 2012.) This article describes a system built by Pennsylvania integrator Istech that uses four Dalsa cameras and Sherlock machine vision software to guide a robot.

The article gives lots of detail and has some excellent photos – the illumination in particular is very interesting – but there’s nothing like seeing a system in operation, is there?

That’s why I’ve lifted this video from Istech’s YouTube channel and embedded it here for your education and delight.

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