AUTOMATICA Best of bin picking
Robot bin picking has been worked on for a number of years, and while it has been shown to be possible, it’s only now that the technology is coming to fruition. Greg Blackman looks at what was on display at Automatica
V
isitors to Automatica in Munich, staged between 19 and 22 June, were presented with various demos showing robot bin
picking in action – a task that is only now starting to be deployed in factories. Dr Olaf Munkelt, managing director of
MVTec, drew attention to the progress made in bin picking during a panel discussion at the show. He explained that, four years ago, bin picking wasn’t possible; it was too complex and needed too many sensors. But now, aſter speaking to exhibitors at the show, this seemed to have been solved to some extent. Both robotics manufacturers Kuka and Fanuc
have built their own vision sensors for bin picking and pick-and-place applications – Kuka with its
3D Perception sensor, and Fanuc with its iRVision range of sensors. Speaking to Imaging and Machine Vision
Europe at Automatica, Sirko Prüfer, product manager for vision, perception and sensitivity at Kuka, noted that only four per cent of Kuka’s small robots – those with a payload of 1-10kg – are equipped with vision; Prüfer wants to increase this to 20 per cent. He said that vision has grown
in importance since Kuka launched its first vision solution at Automatica in 2010, and that there is a demand for greater
10 Imaging and Machine Vision Europe • August/September 2018
More than 46,000 visitors passed through the halls of Automatica
flexibility in robotics. In China, Prüfer noted, a lot of industrial robot applications are only semi- automated where they could be fully automated by incorporating vision. Vision has to be easier to set up and use to
Twenty per cent
of Fanuc’s robots use vision in Germany, and this could be up to 30 per cent in Japan
improve its uptake, Prüfer said. Te advantage with Kuka’s solution is that it simplifies the engineering effort needed to install vision in a robot cell, because the sensor has been built specifically for Kuka robots. Kuka’s 3D Perception sensor is a stereo camera system. It has a resolution of 1,280 x 960 pixels, operates at a frame rate of 200Hz, and has an accuracy of 200mm at a focal length of 65mm. It doesn’t use structured illumination, just ambient light. Depth images are calculated directly in the sensor through a Nvidia Tegra
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