ROBOTICS
Sensor fusion gets robots roving around factories
Susan Curtis explores the burgeoning world of autonomous mobile robots
A
utomation is the key driving force that for many decades has delivered increased productivity across many
different industrial sectors. In the most efficient assembly lines, such as those perfected by automotive manufacturers, robotic machinery plays a crucial role in boosting throughput, reducing operational costs, and optimising the quality of the end product. Tese robotic systems excel at performing
specific tasks in a reliable and repeatable way, while continuing innovation has allowed them to tackle ever more sophisticated and intricate production processes. But for the most part they remain dumb machines: they act only in a pre- defined way, and they must be controlled by complex computer code. Meanwhile, industrial manufacturers are
seeking to introduce greater flexibility into their production facilities, in many cases to offer their customers greater choice. Again, the automotive sector offers a good example. While the traditional assembly line produces the same product over and over again, buyers of new cars expect to be offered an array of different options – ranging from the interior and exterior finishes through to the addition of novel
technologies that are designed to improve comfort or performance. Tis requires a more flexible
manufacturing environment, which in turn demands robots that can move and perform simple tasks without human intervention. ‘Mobility and flexibility will be the next big step in manufacturing automation,’ said Bruno Adam of Omron, a leading developer of robotic systems for industrial applications. Adam explained that most manufacturing
processes are organised around fixed conveyors and robotic systems. To vary the specifications of the end product, human operators are typically needed to move product pieces from one assembly process to another. ‘Increasing flexibility requires more people to handle the work pieces and push them around, but this human intervention does not add much value,’ he said. For that reason large manufacturing
companies are keen to deploy mobile robots to transport inventory and product pieces around the factory floor. Tese autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are designed to move and operate by themselves, which means that they must be able to perceive their surroundings and react to them. Visual information is crucial to aid navigation and avoid collisions, as well as to enable the robot to perform simple functions such as selecting and picking up the objects that need to be moved. Initial deployments of these autonomous
robots have focused on safety, which is most reliably achieved by fitting them with a row of laser scanners around 20cm off the
12 IMAGING AND MACHINE VISION EUROPE DECEMBER 2021/JANUARY 2022
ground. Such 2D lidar systems can detect the presence of people and other obstacles at distances of up to 20m, although most systems can only sense objects at floor level. Omron, which has already deployed more than 2,000 AMRs with customers in Europe, has added a vertical scanner to detect hazards above the ground, such as a raised pallet on a forklift truck. Te problem with these lidar systems is
that they don’t know what the obstacle is, which means that they can’t make decisions about what to do next. ‘Tere will always be some configuration where we need more information than can be provided by a laser scanner,’ Adam said. ‘We are actively developing vision technology to collect more information about the environment and to improve navigation.’ Omron has the in-house expertise to develop its own vision systems, in part
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