Handling of irregular-sized mailpieces by adaptive robotics

Abstract

Singulation is the term used by the US Postal Service to denote the removal of a single mailpiece from a stream, stack, or heap of mailpieces. To expedite the singulation of irregular items, a system for singulating overlapping mailpieces from a moving conveyor at 36 pieces/min with more than 95% efficiency has been developed. The system uses range imaging to guide an AdeptOne robot in removing the parcels from the moving conveyor.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>