Robots on their own
Fully automatic picking of unknown products from bulk material
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In intralogistics , there has been a real hype about robotics for some years now , whether in trade journals or at fairs . Most of them are classic six-axis articulated robots that are looking for their way out of a production environment and into logistics . The goal : fully automated small parts picking . The main driver here is the labour shortage , the big challenge not a technical component like the robot or the gripper , but the design of an overall economic process . Since robots can only handle a portion of the items in each assortment , there are parallel streams of goods and thus possible risks with regard to the flow of goods , inventories , synchronisation and consolidation .
The “ autopick ” picking robot from psb intralogistics GmbH in Pirmasens ( Germany ) meets this challenge . At its core , the fully automated solution for picking individual items consists of a robot with gripper , the IT network for the entire system and a powerful image processing system - equipped with two Ensenso 3D cameras from IDS Imaging Development Systems GmbH .
APPLICATION The vision system acts as the eye of
Multifunctional vacuum cups ensure gentle gripping of a wide variety of items
the robot . It detects grippable surfaces on the objects to be processed in the source container and calculates grasping points and collision-free paths for the robot . This enables the robot to pick up unknown products directly from bulk material and place them in the target bin in the area with the lowest filling .
Vacuum cups ensure gentle gripping of the respective objects . A previous “ teach-in ” of the individual products is not necessary . Regardless of whether it ’ s a medicine bottle or a tea pack , the multifunctional gripper can be individually designed for a wide variety of articles with the most diverse packaging units . The system learns over time which of the different graps works best for each item . The achievable picking performance for a process-safe system is highly dependent on the characteristics of the gripping objects and ranges between 300 and 500 parts per hour .
Two Ensenso N35 3D cameras provide the system with the necessary image data . All Ensenso 3D cameras work according to the “ Projected Texture Stereo Vision ” method . Each model uses two CMOS sensors and a projector that projects high-contrast structures onto the object to be captured - even in difficult lighting conditions . Ensenso cameras operate using stereo vision , which imitates the human vision . The result is a 3D point cloud as the basis for the required spatial object information .
To integrate the cameras into autopick , psb intralogistics used the Ensenso SDK . In addition to wizards for easy setup and