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Joint effort delivers easy-to-use, vision-guided cobot

27 March, 2018

Sick has joined forces with the collaborative robot (cobot) producer, Universal Robots, to develop an entry-level, vision-guided cobot system for pick-and-place, quality inspection and measurement applications. The URCap kit combines Sick’s Inspector PIM60 2D vision sensors with Universal Robots’ UR3, UR5 or UR10 robots to deliver an adaptable vision-guided cobot that is quick and easy to program and configure, without needing special software expertise or a separate PC.

Neil Sandhu, Sick’s UK vision specialist, says that the system will make it “easy to add eyes to your robot application”. The vision sensor will guide the robot to pick up randomly positioned objects, as well as to inspect or measure the objects before picking them.

“Because it doesn’t need specialist programming expertise, it makes an ideal starter vision-guided robotic solution for a production line, even on a small scale, and is sufficiently adaptable to equip a pilot process facility for production development work,” Sandhu adds.

Software built into the camera guides the user through the set-up and calibration process. “Even if an engineer is new to 2D vision robot guidance, development of an effective solution is simple,” says Sandhu. “Experienced users will relish the directness and simplicity of the set-up and parameter-change procedures.”

Everyday tasks such as changing jobs and pick-points, calibration and alignment can all be done directly from a robot control pendant.

The 2D vision sensor “adds eyes” to collaborative robot applications

More advanced operations, such as inspection and dimensional measurement of objects before picking, are achieved using Sick’s Sopas device configuration tool. Extra data fields can accommodate results from both detailed object inspections and measurements.

The PIM60 is an easily configurable, compact 2D vision sensor for high-speed positioning, inspection and measurement, with flexible optics and built-in lighting. It can perform inspections at high speed, and offers tools for a variety of inspection tasks including object location, pixel counting, and pattern, edge, circle and angle sensing.




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