Increase Product Quality with 3D Vision

3D sys­tems today are per­form­ing tasks that just a few years ago were beyond the abil­i­ty of com­put­er-based automa­tion. Machine 3D vision sys­tems are now advanc­ing at light­ning speeds and are ahead of the curve when it comes to fur­ther enabling robots. In less than a decade, experts in the machine vision field pre­dict that 3D vision will be stan­dard equip­ment on robots across all fields and applications.

3D Vision Defined: 

When using 2D cam­eras, Z (dis­tance from cam­era) is typ­i­cal­ly assumed. This isn’t as effec­tive as parts may move, change size, tip, etc. and the 2D cam­era may then mis­cal­cu­late the loca­tion. 3D sys­tems allow for a clean part pick-up with known posi­tion­al data (X, Y, and Z), despite any disruption. 

Vision sys­tem cam­eras cre­ate an image full of pix­els that each has a gray-scale val­ue; this helps to cre­ate a pat­tern or struc­ture in the image data. Spe­cif­ic algo­rithms then help rec­og­nize the image data pat­terns and assist the cam­era in find­ing spe­cif­ic fea­tures, ulti­mate­ly guid­ing the robot to the part. This will also allow machine vision robots to enter per­pen­dic­u­lar to a sur­face and grip parts more effec­tive­ly, repeat­ed­ly, and even con­trol dif­fer­ent parts in any orientation. 

Sim­ply put, the addi­tion­al third dimen­sion (Z) allows the robot to scan, visu­al­ize, mea­sure, and per­fect­ly find and con­trol a part in any position.

Ben­e­fits of 3D Vision: 

The rea­son to take a leap and install new tech­nol­o­gy is that in the long run it costs your com­pa­ny less. 

When using 3D sys­tems, part ori­en­ta­tion and posi­tion are quick­ly found which allows the posi­tion­al infor­ma­tion to be quick­ly acces­si­ble by the robot in order to work with a very high degree of accuracy.

The effi­cien­cy of 3D Vision doesn’t stop with speed, it also can great­ly aid in prod­uct qual­i­ty con­trol. The 3D vision system’s cam­eras can 100% cer­ti­fy the part you are send­ing to the cus­tomer; a trait that a human can’t main­tain over a extend­ed time peri­od. Ulti­mate­ly this avoids cost­ly mis­takes and is also able to guar­an­tee pro­tec­tion against prod­uct returns.

Robot vision gives inte­gra­tors free­dom from fix­tur­ing to locate parts. The vision sys­tems are able to save time and mon­ey as you can sim­ply run a dif­fer­ent pro­gram instead of swap­ping fixtures. 

Machine vision allows the robot to work in less struc­tured envi­ron­ments, such as pick and plac­ing parts ran­dom­ly placed on a con­vey­or, or rack­ing auto­mo­bile com­po­nents, and in agri­cul­tur­al and food pro­cess­ing industries.

Man­u­al adjust­ments are no longer nec­es­sary as 3D vision allows robots to ver­i­fy the part with the 3D cam­era and adjust as need­ed. This will result in an increase in prod­uct qual­i­ty all while min­i­miz­ing man­u­al labor. 

The com­pu­ta­tions involved are more com­plex; how­ev­er, experts believe the pro­grams are quick­ly becom­ing more prac­ti­cal and user friend­ly. Cus­tomer demands for these sys­tems con­tin­ue to rise because of the amaz­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty, effi­cien­cy, and qual­i­ty that 3D vision brings.

Best 3D Applications: 

3D vision is uni­ver­sal and can add to vir­tu­al­ly any appli­ca­tion. Lead­ing the way in 3D-vision adop­tion today: weld­ing, bin pick­ing, pack­ag­ing, and machine tool loading.

Weld­ing- 3D Vision weld­ing robots are able to adapt and change the weld­ing path when it notices small changes in the arrange­ment of the com­po­nents that are being welded.

Bin Pick­ing- Robots have been suc­cess­ful using 3D vision with both struc­tured and ran­dom bin pick­ing. The pick­ing tool, sen­sor, and con­straints of the arm are under­stood to help rec­og­nize the acces­si­bil­i­ty of the part.

Pack­ag­ing- 3D Vision helps to pick up prod­ucts that end up in dif­fer­ent posi­tions at the end of a con­vey­or or slide and place them in the cor­rect posi­tion in the package.

Pal­letiz­ing- Robots with vision that con­stant­ly han­dle parts or box­es are able to be aware and flex­i­ble to the unex­pect­ed shift­ing and movement.

Load­ing Machine Tools- Vision adds for­give­ness to out-of-loca­tion robot place­ments and min­i­mizes poten­tial machine tool crashes.

Options:

Sev­er­al com­pa­nies are step­ping up to the plate and to cre­ate amaz­ing soft­ware pack­ages to help fur­ther advance your com­pa­ny with 3D Vision Systems. 

Fanuc iR-Vision helps every robot, from the small­est to the strongest, become capa­ble of see­ing and work­ing as pre­cise­ly as a human work­er. It has reli­able visu­al detec­tion, detec­tion of mov­ing parts (visu­al line track­ing), and an Anti­De­fect Option with qual­i­ty con­trol com­plete­ness. This is a big step for Fanuc Robot­ics in the evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy as it is the first 3D robot-con­troller inte­grat­ed sys­tem. This erad­i­cates hard­ware and com­mu­ni­ca­tion delays and fur­ther increas­es the robot’s aware­ness of its rel­a­tive rela­tion­ships in space. This inte­grat­ed sys­tem also takes just hours to set up. 

Cognex launched Vision­Pro 3D-Locate soft­ware and 3D dis­place­ment sys­tems, the DS1000 series. Both enable cus­tomers to eas­i­ly adopt 3D machine vision and use it with cur­rent inspec­tion steps. Vision­Pro 3D is not lim­it­ed to any appli­ca­tions as it works with a num­ber of fixed and mount­ed robot cameras.

Moto­Sight 3D Cor­texVi­sion by Motoman Robot­ics is an easy-to-inte­grate, com­pre­hen­sive, and pow­er­ful vision sys­tem that sim­pli­fies the use of 3D vision in robot­ic guid­ance appli­ca­tions. It is ide­al for pre­cise part loca­tion required for assem­bly, rack­ing, dis­pens­ing, machine load­ing, prod­uct sort­ing, and weld­ing applications.

eVi­sion Fac­to­ry 6.5, cre­at­ed by Robot­ic Vision Tech­nolo­gies, deliv­ers fea­tures with more flex­i­bil­i­ty, employ­ee col­lab­o­ra­tion and safe­ty, ease of han­dling parts, reduced down­time, reduced cycle time, cost sav­ings, sim­plic­i­ty and stan­dard­iza­tion. It can be used on Fanuc, KUKA and Motoman.

Robo­Re­alm is an appli­ca­tion for use in robot­ic vision sys­tems that has an easy point and click inter­face and sim­pli­fies the pro­gram­ming to eas­i­ly exper­i­ment with the envi­ron­ment and acquired images to ana­lyze what is nec­es­sary to increase your robot’s effectiveness.

Skil­li­gent Robot Vision Sys­tem is a soft­ware com­po­nent designed specif­i­cal­ly for robot­ic appli­ca­tions which imple­ments pow­er­ful object recog­ni­tion and object track­ing algorithms.

Con­tact our Robot­worx experts today to begin the tran­si­tion to a 3D sys­tem and find the best fit for your com­pa­ny; online or at 877−762−6881.