Overview
With the steady rise in domestic labor costs and the gradual disappearance of the advantage of cheap labor in China, "machine substitution" has become an inevitable trend. Meanwhile, China's manufacturing industry is transitioning toward higher-end sectors, taking on advanced international manufacturing tasks, and further driving the development of industrial robots toward intelligence. Intelligent industrial robots will undoubtedly become the future technological focal point and economic growth driver.
Intelligent industrial robots integrate personal software modules, sensors, and vision systems in the best possible ways. Among the intelligent elements of a robot, the vision system is crucial, particularly in high-precision operations. Without the guidance of the visual system, robots cannot complete their tasks. For robot vision guidance, the MicroMatch Smart Camera is an excellent choice.
Key Technologies
There are numerous key technologies involved in robot-guided vision applications, primarily concerning vision.
Firstly, coordinate calibration technology (hand-eye calibration): In robot guidance applications, multiple coordinate systems are involved, such as the robot coordinate system, the tool coordinate system, and the image coordinate system. Determining the correspondence between these various coordinate systems is essential. The MicroMatch Smart Camera provides an automated method for calibrating these different coordinate systems.
In traditional calibration methods, the calibration plate is either fixed or installed on the robot. However, this approach has significant limitations in practical projects, especially in high-precision situations where the camera's shooting position may be outside the robot's reach, or due to mechanical structural design, the robot cannot move to the camera's field of view at all. In response to these issues, MicroMatch employs a more flexible calibration scheme that allows the robot to pick up a "rigid body" with distinct features. As long as the "rigid body" section enters the camera's shooting range and completes a series of specified actions, the calibration can be accomplished quickly and conveniently.
Since the robot picks up an "arbitrary rigid body" without pre-set feature points, the advanced algorithm configuration function of the MicroMatch software is required to extract feature points.
Lens distortion correction technology is relatively mature but presents challenges in practical project applications. One notable issue is that due to limitations in installation space, light source illumination modes, etc., a complete calibration board image cannot always be obtained, posing a significant challenge to the calibration work. To address this problem, the MicroMatch smart camera adopts a customized calibration plate and a more robust calibration algorithm. It can accurately complete lens distortion calibration even when the calibration plate is incomplete, partially obstructed, or even partially blocked inside the calibration plate.
Robot rotation compensation technology: In actual robot guidance projects, robots need to customize different "fixtures" according to the captured products, bringing a significant problem to high-precision robot guidance projects—the deviation between the center of the fixture and the rotation center of the robot. This deviation directly results in a substantial decrease in accuracy in many items involving rotation, and correcting this deviation is very complex.
Some foreign robot control systems support rotation center compensation technology, but this compensation can only be achieved through visual inspection. The "visual" correction method severely reduces system accuracy and can only mitigate this factor to some extent, without ensuring accuracy. Moreover, most domestically produced robot systems lack this function. Compensation for the robot's rotation can only be solved with a matching vision system.
Communication Technology
As a standard product, the MicroMatch Smart Camera is perfectly suited to facilitate the application of various robot vision guidance projects and communicate with various brands of robots. MicroMatch smart camera adopts unique and convenient "free protocol" technology, allowing it to complete docking work with various robots without programming based on the communication rules of different robot manufacturers.
Typical Cases
Firstly, the metal assembly case: The project requirement is for the manipulator to blindly catch the "metal piece" and then take a photo at the top of the camera. The MicroMatch intelligent camera takes a photo and controls the manipulator to place the metal part at the specified position. The project requires assembling five different "metal parts." Two robots and two MicroMatch smart cameras are used to speed up the process. Two are assembled on one table, and three on another. Since the five pieces of the captured product are different, the corresponding placement positions are also different. Since the MicroMatch smart camera has multiple logic processing functions, a simple smart camera can control the robot to grab the "different" products and place them at "different" target positions.
Secondly, the high-precision fitting case: The background of the project is the high-precision fit of the screen, with the robot's pasting precision being 6u. The scheme adopts dual cameras to shoot diagonally to improve accuracy. Due to the need for dual camera cooperation, one camera's data needs to be sent to another camera, and the other camera receives the data and calculates the final result to control the robot.
In conclusion, the MicroMatch smart camera significantly lowers the threshold for manipulator vision guidance control. It can not only achieve single-camera cooperation but also enable multi-camera coordination in high-precision multi-station complex application scenarios, integrating software, multi-logic, and multi-object management, reducing the robotic programming workload.
Fiber Optic Connector,Optic Fiber Connector,Lc Fiber Connector,Lc Upc Connector
Guangzhou Jiqian Fiber Optic Cable Co.,ltd , https://www.jqopticcable.com