3D sensor as the heart of a pick and place solution

Christmas time is calendar time. When the turn of the year approaches, the production of personalised calendars reaches its peak. Individually designed calendars are appreciated as a year-round reminder of happy moments. By means of their pick and place solution in a printing shop, the start-up Unchained Robotics help to deliver the personalized calendars to the customers as quickly as possible. The central elements: a collaborative robot and the 3D sensor from ifm.

An industrial area on the outskirts of Paderborn in East Westphalia: this is where large quantities of calendars are produced. Whether 100 copies for business customers or individual copies for private individuals who create their own personal calendar on online portals: a great variety of calendars in different formats from DIN A5 to DIN A3 are packed for shipment and fed to the pick and place station from Unchained Robotics. Here, a laser scanner automatically detects the bar code to allow tracking via track and trace, before the calendar is picked from the conveyor belt by a collaborative robot and placed on a transport pallet or in a post box – neatly sorted by size.

Convinced by the 3D sensor – and ifm's technical support

The heart of the robot installation is the 3D sensor from ifm, the O3D. The operating principle of the O3D is based on the time-of-flight principle. By means of 23,000 pixels arranged in a matrix, the 3D sensor detects the time needed by the light emitted to reach the sensor again as a reflection per capture. Based on this data, the O3D precisely calculates the spatial dimensions of objects and scenes. "This aspect played an important role in our decision for the O3D," says Mladen Milicevic, one of the founders of Unchained Robotics. "No other equipment or process stops are necessary, because the sensor exactly detects the height, basic form, angle and displacement of each package. This means that the packages can be placed on the conveyor belt without observing a particular arrangement or orientation. This reduces the strain on the employees and accelerates the manual process," explains Milicevic.

Easy integration into existing software

"We particularly opted for the O3D and for ifm because of the easy integration into our in-house developed software," Milicevic continues. "And if we had questions, ifm's support helped us quickly and competently." Based on the data, the software from Unchained Robotics can exactly calculate where the robot has to place its suction cups on the package to be handled. This ensures that the calendar is always picked up at equilibrium and at optimum orientation.

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