Publication . Costa, Paulo Gomes da; Costa, Pedro; Lima, José; Veiga, Germano
Industrial laser cutting machines use a type of support base that
sometimes causes the cut metal parts to tilt or fall, which hinders the robot from
picking the parts after cutting. The objective of this work is to calculate the 3D
orientation of these metal parts with relation to the main metal sheet to
successfully perform the subsequent robotic pick-and-place operation. For the
perception part the system relies on the low cost 3D sensing Microsoft Kinect,
which is responsible for mapping the environment. The previously known part
positions are mapped in the new environment and then a plane fitting algorithm
is applied to obtain its 3D orientation. The implemented algorithm is able to
detect if the piece has fallen or not. If not, the algorithm calculates the
orientation of each piece separately. This information is later used for the robot
manipulator to perform the pick-and-place operation with the correct tool
orientation. This makes it possible to automate a manufacturing process that is
entirely human dependent nowadays.
