Picking objects from a bin is so trivial for humans, we can do it in the dark at the movie theatre with a bag of popcorn. But for a robot, locating, orienting, picking and placing an object from a chaotic arrangement of parts in a bin is a major challenge.
According to Eric Andersen, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Energid, vision vendors focus on gathering the visual data, such as a 3D point cloud, from the parts in the bin. After that, getting the robot in and out of the bin and to your placement location is left to the user. Energid’s Robotic Motion Control and Path Planning software allows the robot to determine the best path through the environment into and out of the bin, and to the placement location.
In this video, Andersen explains the technology and a demo of the process shown at Automate 2019.