With better eyes, we get better robot outcomes, leading to more trust in our automation systems
Customer visits provide an excellent learning possibility. Recently my co-worker met a company making robotic automation systems.
They target a variety of industrial automation applications, including palletization and depalletization for the food and beverage industry. The primary challenge facing them was to automate the task of beverage palletization.
He noted down some of their difficulties;
- Identify cases, with and without labels or specific markings
- Avoid tricks that cardboard bulges, overzealous flaps, and damaged corners play on less sophisticated robot vision systems
- Reliably describe what to look for when carton sizes regularly change to marketing needs
- Assure that beverage cases, once shrink wrapped, don’t have “tails” that get snagged in machinery
The common denominator? The smart people in the R&D department at the customer realized all their automation problems were related to machine vision systems.
Everything is a vision situation. With better eyes, we get better robot outcomes which lead to more trust in our automation systems.
A well-designed vision system can alleviate many, if not all, of the problems outlined by the customer. An ideal machine vision solution allows;
- SKUs to be verified by sight independent of markings and labels
- Mitigates against object orientation issues
- Deals with creative marketing departments that need to modify packaging
However, the customer had not yet found a solution that checked off everything on their list of requirements…
Read the full article here: https://info.zivid.com/blog/better-eyes-better-robot-outcomes
