 Vision
Guided Robotics
Robots have been used in manufacturing environments for some time,
and although they excel at repetitive tasks, they have some limitations.
The primary problem is the placement of the objects they are to perform
work on. The objects are often required to be oriented in the proper
position plus or minus a certain tolerance. If the objects are outside
this window, the robot may have to pause operation, and request operator
intervention to correct the problem.
Integrating a vision system into a robotic system can provide an
additional feedback path, as well as other functions, such as counting
parts in a tray, possibly eliminating the need for a separate sensor
for that task. If an object the robot is required to interact with
is offset from its required nominal position, the vision system
can recognize this, and send information about the position error,
and the magnitude of it, to the motion control system that is able
to correct for it.
The Valde Systems VS1501 works well in these applications due to
its small size and low power requirements, however the main feature
provided by the VS1501 its stereo vision capability. This is particularly
important for robots that operate in a three dimensional space.
Stereo vision systems use data from two cameras to calculate distance
to objects.
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