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Cosmetics industry

A vision system that gives the coordinates of the bottles for a depalletizing robot

At the end of 2016, PRO-CONTROL completed the modernization of the robotic bottle depalletizing station in cosmetic plants.

The reason for the modernization of the vision system was the long processing time of the photo, the unreliability of the previous system and the difficulty in adding new formats. Therefore, PRO-CONTROL proposed the use of the COGNEX In-Sight vision system. A fast intelligent camera model 8402 with the TAMRON M118-FM12 lens was selected for this task.

System description

To evenly illuminate the bottles, a large-area LED illuminator providing diffused light was used from the existing vision system. Thanks to the use of advanced algorithms of searching for a pattern and an algorithm narrowing the field of searching for bottles, it was possible to achieve a full inspection time of 37 ms, while maintaining full accuracy of bottle detection. The selected algorithms tolerate changes in the appearance of the neck resulting from the change in the perspective of observing the bottles in the carton and the skew of the bottles. Based on the COGNEX Visio-View software, an operator panel was prepared that allows you to train bottle patterns, change detection parameters and add new production formats. The interface also allows you to simulate the operation of the vision system, making it possible to test its operation without consuming raw materials. The robot’s operation has been modified so that it can optimally retrieve bottles from new, larger-capacity packaging.

Summary

The use of a modern vision control system allowed to shorten the inspection time, increase the reliability of the workstation and increase the flexibility of the machine, allowing the launch of new formats.

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