Palletization, depalletization with EyeScan 3D and Kinect sensor

EVT’s expanded EyeVision system opens up new application ranges of robot control by the combination of a depth sensor and a normal camera via the Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect sensor.

By SOURCE: EVT April 21, 2011

Eye Vision Technology (EVT) Gmbh expanded the EyeScan 3D system with the addition of a Kinect sensor. The sensor was originally developed for the Xbox 360 but now Kinect opens up new possibilities in the range of robotics: among others in the range of palletization and depalletization but also in the sortation of components on the assembly line.

The expanded EyeVision system opens up new application ranges of robot control by the combination of a depth sensor and a normal camera. A classical application of the system combination is, for example, bin picking, but three dimensional matching multiple tasks can be solved easily – particularly the combination of two different sensor images facilitates the grasp of objects.

The altitude images and as well the grey images of the Kinect camera are available via the high-capacity algorithms of the EyeVision 3D software. Therefore, a contour matching in a three dimensional space is as possible as the evaluation of imprints.

This novelty has a lot of advantages in the field of palletization, depalletization, sortation and object recognition. Robots can pilot palettes, control the completeness, and can gather a different number of articles from the palettes in order to load a new palette with these articles.

The robot can immediately access all data of an object like for example the spatial position, the measure etc. Then the robot-gripper can be simply navigated to a grip position with the aid of the EyeVision software in order to execute the tasks.

The system combination also opens up new possibilities for the quality check. The objects can be already checked for correctness during the gripping. The communication to the robots occurs via a high-capacity library that contains the instruction sets for many conventional robots like for example KUKA, ABB, Stäubli and others.

The connection of the EyeVision software to the industrial robots is as fast and simple as already known from the EyeSpector systems. The system has to be parametrized with the aid of the EV software only once – then any task in the field of industrial image processing can be solved. Naturally all classical image processing methods are also available for the system like e.g. reading tasks (OCR/OCV, bar code, DMC, QR code), measuring tasks and much more.

www.evt-web.com

EVT GmbH

Also see www.controleng.com/machinevision.

– Edited by Gust Gianos, Control Engineering, www.controleng.com