February 2022 Volume 4

AUTOMATION

The end-of-arm-tool picking an object in the corner of the bin.

This degree of added flexibility ensures top-notch performance even on the most tedious picks, i.e., billets in corners and/or under very steep angles. Pickit 3DVisionMakes Robots Situationally Aware Concretely, how does this translate into performance? The table below shows two test runs for different steel billets. A test run is defined as 12 hours of continuous operation from container to container. Each pick cycle contains (1) an image capture, (2) the

actual pick and (3) drop operation. As the camera is mounted on- arm, we only require one vision system to pick from two containers. Furthermore, one robot picking from two containers ensures continuous feeding as the robot always has one bin while the other one is being refilled. The performance indicators measured during these tests are first pick success ratio and number of billets remaining in the container. The pick ratio for both tests well exceeded the 90% mark. The average number of billets remaining is nearly zero.

Table 1: Performance indicators from a 12-hour benchmark test on varying billet sizes.

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2022 28