Application of a robotic system with mobile manipulator and vision positioning

Abstract

 Abstract—This paper introduces a robotic system for electric energy meter detection, which is composed of AGV, RGV, 6-DOF manipulator and vision positioning. AGV is used to transport the electric energy meter from warehouse to transfer station for detection and send them back after detection. The manipulator is installed on a RGV and used to pick the electric energy meter to the detection platform with the help of RGV. All electric energy meters are placed back to their original position after detection. The manipulator end-effcector has three parallel pneumatic grippers that can grasp three meters at the same time. A camera and three barcode scanners are employed in the end-effector for positioning and reading barcode respectively. This system has been put into use in factory. I. I NTRODUCTION The electric energy meter detection is necessary before the electric energy meters are put into use. There are millions of newly produced electric energy meters waiting to be detected every year. This work is simple and boring but important and requires repeated manipulation to electric energy meters. Compared with picking and place, the detection takes much more time in this work (1)-(2). The process of the electric energy meter detection needs to carry the meters from the warehouse to the platform, detect for more than an hour or even several hours (three phase meter), and send them back to the warehouse after detection. If all these operations are done by humans, the cost and efficiency will be both beyond expectation. So we employ a robotic system that includes AGV, RGV and manipulator to complete all of these tasks. The industrial robots are mostly in the form of wheeled vehicles and manipulators. The wheeled vehicles, such as AGV and RGV, are usually used to transport materials for a long distance. The manipulators can machine surface, assemble parts, weld, spray paint and do many other complicated things. Those robots usually work together and complete all kinds of tasks coordinately, which can be called an integrated system in production. Researchers have already done much work about AGV (3)-(4), and the critical point is how to achieve automatic guide or path planning during locomotion. The automatic guide is widely used in industry and achieved by laying out magnetic things at its scheduled path. The AGV can also have