The following article, written by Max Falcone, product development engineer at Comau Inc., appeared in Control Design.
Robotic systems are becoming more popular and widespread in many industrial manufacturing settings, so the need for reliable operation with the least possible amount of downtime is a common, expected demand. Significant advantages can be realized when these robots are coupled with vision systems.
Most current vision systems require extensive support from trained experts and are less reliable due to their complexity. Our company made a fundamental step change to simplify the programming and mechanical complexity of robotic guidance applications.
As our company learned through extensive installations, an innovative vision scheme is only half the battle. Mechanical reliability also plays a big role.
Comau, a worldwide integrator of automation systems headquartered in Southfield, Mich., develops turnkey automated assembly systems and produces robots, weld guns, conveyors, recognition systems and other critical components of automation.
Comau ranks among the largest integrators in the world, with 34 locations in 18 countries and has worked with most of the major automotive manufacturers, first-tier suppliers and industrial/consumer manufacturing companies around the world.
Guidance Counseling
During 2008, engineers at Comau’s North American headquarters looked to develop a robotic guidance system that was an improvement over what they were purchasing from outside suppliers. The goal was to provide a robust system with lower acquisition and operating costs. As part of this improvement initiative, Comau developed its new RecogniSense software, which was introduced in January.
RecogniSense is, in our view, a groundbreaking visual recognition and guidance package. It functions very similarly to the human visual process. “This means it can learn a large number of objects and recognize any of the learned objects regardless of its orientation in the visual field of the camera,” says Mark Anderson, robotic product development engineer at Comau.
RecogniSense uses a conventional 2D camera but it provides three-dimensional data. It provides the coordinate offsets from teach position with six degrees of freedom, X, Y, Z, Rx, Ry and Rz. These coordinates guide industrial robots effortlessly.