TE Connectivity:
Robotic Reel Placer Design Of Experiment (D.O.E)
In this project I worked with a team of engineers and physicists to understand if we could replace human labor with a robotic arm and a vision system. This was an experiment to see if we could robotically move and stack cardboard reels full of connectors in place of human laborers.
We used a Universal Robotics arm, a Cognex vision camera, a Coval vacuum gripper, and a laser distance sensor. In combination, they communicated with each other to the robot arm to direct the movements and position the reels. It took a lot of trial and error to get the system to work and grip the reels properly.
To program the Cognex camera, we learned to use their spreadsheet editor which allowed us to implement pattern recognition and pickup the reels accurately. We then programmed the robotic arm to take the information from the camera and use it to position the end effector with the suction gripper.