Industrial robots have evolved considerably since they were installed at General Motors plant to extract moulded parts from die-casting machines in the late 1950s.
Where those early generation robots were generally highly specialized, single purpose machines, modern robots have developed to the point where one can be used for a variety of tasks, with just a changing of the tools and programming. Their precision and accuracy have improved by leaps and bounds, as has software that powers them, making these automation tools capable of handling tasks as varied as selecting an auto windscreen or selecting only perfectly formed biscuits for packaging.
With the Japanese leading the robot charge, nearly one million multi-purpose robots are estimated to be in use by 2006, with over 400,000 in Japan, nearly 150,000 in the USA and over 250,000 in the European Union with more than 30,000 in other parts of the developing world. All major industrial robot manufacturers are turning out models that are visionenabled. Where blind robots consist of just a robot and computer driven controller, vision-enabled robots add a camera for capturing images of components as they travel down the conveyor belt, software for identifying and processing those images, and lighting to make sure the camera captures the best possible image.
The camera can be placed directly on the robot or above the work cell. The software runs on a Windows-based computer connected to an Ethernet network.
Instead of locking a part’s position in advance to suit a blind robot, the camera in a vision enabled robot lets the robot see the position of a loose part and adjust itself accordingly to manipulate it. The system calculates a component’s position on the fly, grasps it, inspects it and moves it to where it needs to go.