Robot Arms with 3D Vision Capabilities

Abstract

The use of industrial robots in production started a rapid expansion in the 1980s, since they had the possibility of improving productivity, being able to work for extended periods of time with good repeatability, therefore making the quality of products stable. However, since the first robots worked “blindly”, on a pre-programmed trajectory, dedicated equipment had to be prepared only for supplying the workpieces to the robots (Inaba & Sakakibara, 2009). Also, human operators had to manually align the workpieces before the robot was able to manipulate them. The intelligent robots appeared later in 2001 in order to solve this problem. An intelligent industrial robot is not a humanoid robot that walks and talks like a human, but one that performs complex tasks, similar to a skilled worker. This is achieved with sensors (vision, force, temperature etc) and artificial intelligence techniques. Today, solutions to problems like picking parts placed randomly in a bin (bin picking), which were considered difficult a few years ago, are now considered mature: (Hardin, 2008) and (Iversen, 2006). A similar problem is auto racking, where robots have to pick parts which are presented one at a time, although the exact location and 3D orientation varies. These applications are made possible using 3D vision sensors.