1. Project description

This work is one of the projects I was responsible for during my work in 2018 at Beijing, China. The goal of this project is to develop a vision system for positioning LCD panels and guide the manipulator for automatic grabbing and packaging.

The minimization of manpower and full automation of factories are key indicators of Industry 4.0. In the face of increasingly fierce market competition, enhancing production efficiency and reducing production costs have become especially crucial. Packaging, as the final step before the product reaches the customer, palys a pivotal role not only in terms of production efficiency but also directly impacts product quality and customer satisfaction. This project focuses on LCD panels. By utilizing cameras to caputure specific patterns on the LCDs, it then calculates the panel’s pose based on this information to guide the robot arms in picking and packing. The entire process is fully automated and requires no human intervention.

Scheme layout of the vision system

Challenge:

• The grasping accuracy of the robot arm is affected by both the servo and vision system.
• Large LCD panels, i.e. 58 inches, are more sensitive to rotation accuracy, which requires the vision system to be very precise and robust.

2. Responsibilities

• Discuss the scheme with the customer and other engineers.
• Develop the vision system for positioning and grabbing of LCD panels.

3. Contributions

• Developed the calibration and lighting scheme of the vision system, which is very important for the precise positioning of the LCD panels.
• Developed the vision system based on VisionPro from Cognex.
• Deployed the system in the production line and cooperated with other engineering processes, like robot arm, to realize the automatic grabbing and packaging.
• Maintained the system and provided technical support.

Tools: C#, VisionPro, SQLite

4. Some Results

• Setup:
  • Industrial cameras: GigE cameras × 8
  • Frame grabber: Cognex 8704E
  • Lighting: Strip light

• Vision system