General Methods to Enable Robots with Vision to Acquire, Orient, and Transport Workpieces. Final Report

摘要

The general objective of the research was to enable robots to perform more tasks in industry. The problem of feeding workpieces which are unoriented in bins was adopted as the prime focus for research. Results indicate that a large variety of workpieces, randomly oriented in a supply bin, can be located with a vision system and removed one at a time. Once such a piece is clear of the bin, it can be oriented using a second vision system and then delivered to a specific location with the piece in a specific pose. The basic research emphasized the development of techniques to interpret sensory data as well as the organization and development of hardware and software to improve the speed of these processes, especially image analysis.