An Integrated System of Industrial Robotics and Machine Vision for the Automation of the Assembly and Packaging Process of Industrial Hinges

The manufacturing, assembly, and packaging processes of industrial hinges must improve their productivity. To address this challenge, a technological system based on a robot arm and vision machine was developed, integrated, and evaluated. The devices that make up the hardware architecture are the following: the Epson VT6L six-degrees-of-freedom industrial robot arm, the Compact Vision CV2-HA image-processing device, the Basler acA1600-20gc camera, and the end effector based on 3 kg holding force electromagnets. The software elements used for the development of this automated system are the SPEL+ programming language and VisionGuide tool, both of which are integrated into the Epson RC+ robotic system development environment. For the performance evaluation of the hinges and packaging identification algorithms, 80 hinges of each type were used as input to the robotic system workstation. As a result, the following results were obtained: (1) the hinge identification algorithms were 100% correct, (2) the primary packaging identification algorithm was 100% correct, and (3) the hinge assembly algorithm was 92.5% correct because it had six errors. These results provide evidence of the effectiveness of the developed system. In addition, the motion times of the robot arm were analyzed in detail to identify opportunities for improving the automated production process.