Vision guided flexible feeding made easy

Abstract

Flexible feeding is an emerging alternative to traditional part feeding methods. This alternative greatly enhances the versatility of a manufacturing workcell by using a robot manipulator and sophisticated sensing devices such as machine vision, thereby significantly reducing both cost and set up time. This article explores the benefits of a new model in PC-based robot control, which makes the development of flexible feeders and similar applications much easier than using traditional robot programming environments. It also explores how a programming paradigm based on a well-defined model of the workcell greatly simplifies both the logic of the application and the calibration of the physical machine.