Sunday, December 06, 2009
Robotic Arms Avoid Collision
Videos show a new program that lets robotic arms in a factory gracefully avoid each other.
Experimental software developed by Harris
Corporation, an international communication equipment company, could help
make robots less clumsy and dangerous.
The software allows a factory robot to sense and avoid objects while
still moving quickly.
Harris Corporation engineer Paul Bosscher described the technology
at last month's 2009 IEEE's Technologies for Practical Robot Applications conference
in Woburn, MA.
The software creates a virtual "shell" around the robot's
arm, allowing it to avoid obstacles in combination with machine vision. Bosscher says the company has applied for
a patent and may try to market the collision avoidance program to businesses.
The video below shows using the software to automatically avoid another robot:
In another clip, the robot avoids a red ball:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
ECF
12/08/2009
Posts:7
Collision avoidance with humans and other dynamic objects has always been a topic in industrial robotics area.
I wonder how many cameras are used, how are they mounted, and how much "standardization" (enough light,no shadow,etc.) of the environment has to be made in order to make the vision system work.
wljiang
12/19/2009
Posts:2
paulbossch...
01/18/2010
Posts:1