Bin-picking application with MVTec HALCON boosts productivity

Short cycle times, little scrap, minimal stock-keeping – the factory of the future is networked and highly economical. This requires increasingly flexible and fast manufacturing processes that can be implemented using robots and 3D technologies. An important component here is machine vision. A specialist for it is the Pose Automation GmbH, a Certified Integration Partner of MVTec. This system integrator develops high-tech systems for machine vision and robotics. For a customer in the field of veterinary medicine, they developed a tailor-made robotic cell in which catheters are sorted into a packaging machine. The robust and flexible machine vision software MVTec HALCON was used to locate the position and orientation of the objects to be gripped.

The application

Following production, the catheters are transported on a conveyor belt in large quantities in a random manner to the gripping area of the robot arm. The system is equipped with an Ensenso 3D camera for rapid recognition of the individual parts. The camera detects the catheters lying in random orientations and delivers a three-dimensional point cloud of them. The connected image processing system uses this information to calculate the position and alignment of the objects to be gripped. The robot controls them in a targeted manner, grips 2 pieces per cycle and inserts them individually into format tubes. Not only the recognition and gripping of different catheter designs but also further assembly steps, such as the attachment of hose pieces, are possible. In this way, different catheters from different production lines can be packed on the same packaging machine.

On the software side, Pose Automation works with the market-leading machine vision software HALCON from MVTec. "We offer our customers thereby a maximum of product security and productivity“ says Pose. Adaptable to almost any manufacturing process, the software integrated in the application is designed for harsh environmental conditions and contains interfaces to various other common systems – entirely in the spirit of industry 4.0.

The result

Thanks to the flexible application, the delivery of the goods can be adapted exactly to the customer's needs and the storage of the finished products can be minimized. This increases productivity, e.g. by optimal adaptation to the capacity utilization of the production.

You can download the full success story here.

Text kindly provided by IDS Imaging Development Systems GmbH.
Images kindly provided by Pose Automation GmbH.