Integration of a vision system with a robotic polishing system for machining variety of workpieces

Abstract Industrial robots are extensively employed in a variety of surface industrial processes. To increase productivity, automated manufacturing systems operate in the factory on the physical product to perform operations such as processing, material handling, polishing and sometimes accomplishing more than one of these operations in the same system. It is necessary to locate objects or its features as rapidly as possible so that further image-processing algorithms can extract features. Robotic-based pick-and-place applications can be achieved by determining the correct orientation of a part within 2D or 3D space. A machine vision image acquisition hardware platform was set up, HALCON software used for noise filter, threshold segmentation and edge detection of the workpiece image to comply with identification accuracy requirements. Based on the preprocessing result, the workpiece features information extracted. Integration of the machine vision system allows the polishing system to simultaneously processing a variety of workpieces identifying the shape, size and color on the test bench. The workpiece was classified by these characteristics and the classification information is output to the controller. The recognition result is output to the PLC to generate the corresponding polishing paths, reduce time of operation and increase the flexible processing capacity.