Development of Multi-Robotic Arm System for Sorting System Using Computer Vision

This paper develops a multi-robotic arm system and a stereo vision system to sort objects in the right position according to size and shape attributes. The robotic arm system consists of one master and three slave robots associated with three conveyor belts. Each robotic arm is controlled by a robot controller based on a microcontroller. A master controller is used for the vision system and communicating with slave robotic arms using the Modbus RTU protocol through an RS485 serial interface. The stereo vision system is built to determine the 3D coordinates of the object. Instead of rebuilding the entire disparity map, which is computationally expensive, the centroids of the objects in the two images are calculated to determine the depth value. After that, we can calculate the 3D coordinates of the object by using the formula of the pinhole camera model. Objects are picked up and placed on a conveyor branch according to their shape. The conveyor transports the object to the location of the slave robot. Based on the size attribute that the slave robot receives from the master, the object is picked and placed in the right position. Experiment results reveal the effectiveness of the system. The system can be used in industrial processes to reduce the required time and improve the performance of the production line

Design a low-cost delta robot arm for pick and place applications based on computer vision

In this paper, we develop a low-cost delta robot arm for grasping objects of unspecified size thanks to a vision system. Stepper motors are used instead of ac servo motors to build a low-cost delta robot arm. Furthermore, we use available materials and machining methods such as laser cutting and 3d printing instead of CNC milling and turning to reduce fabrication costs. The controller is based on a low-cost embedded controller - Arduino Uno for controlling the robot's motion. The vision system is constructed to determine the 3D coordinate of objects in the workspace as well as the sizes of objects. The gripper is opened with a distance of two fingers equal to the size of the objects, and the robot is controlled to the objects' coordinates to grasp them. An application to pick up objects on a conveyor belt is developed to validate the design. The experimental results show that the robot system works correctly, the robot arm moves smoothly, and the information determined by the vision system has a small error, ensuring that the robot can accurately pick up products