Automated throwing and capturing of cylinder-shaped objects

Abstract

A new approach for transportation of objects within production systems by automated throwing and capturing is investigated. This paper presents an implementation, consisting of a throwing robot and a capturing robot. The throwing robot uses a linear and the capturing robot a rotary axis. The throwing robot is capable of throwing cylinder-shaped objects onto a target point with high precision. The capturing robot there smoothly grips the cylinders during flight by means of a rotational movement. In order to synchronize the capturing robot and the cylinder's pose and velocity, its trajectory has to be modeled as well as the motion sequences of both robots. The throwing and capturing tasks are performed by the robots automatically without the use of any external sensor system.

Observing and Forecasting the Trajectory of the Thrown Body with use of Genetic Programming

“…It is enough to make a throw once, to track the trajectory of the object and to develop the trajectory of the capture device based on the results. This approach is applicable to objects with high aerodynamic stability (for example, cylindrical objects in [16]). If dropped objects do not have the required aerodynamic stability (studies in [24] and [16] show that even objects that are as simple in shape as a tennis ball and a hollow metal cylinder, respectively, do not possess it), this approach ceases to be useful.…”

“…Robotic transfer as a method of such transportation was proposed in 2006 by Frank [12]. This application was developed in [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Transportation of an object from some point of departure A to some destination B is as follows: the robot thrower located in A throws the object in direction B and notifies about it via the communication line, and the robot catcher located in B, having received the notification, carries out object capture on the fly.…”

“…The share of successful captures in most existing systems does not exceed 80% (two exceptions are described in [11] and [16]; in the first article, a high proportion of successful captures is provided by large linear dimensions of the gripping device; in the second, by throwing cylindrical objects of high aerodynamic stability), which is not sufficient for use in a real industrial environment. Thus, the practical implementation of transportation by robotic throw is a complex and relevant scientific task.…”

Throwing and Capturing of Workpieces by Robots - New Transport Services for the Internet-Of-Things in Production Systems

“…Many research works have been performed in the past at first to investigate throwing and capturing of ball shaped objects by robots (Frese et al, 2001); (Senoo et al, 2008); (Barteit, 2009). During the last years also throwing and capturing of axialsymmetric objects was developed (Frank et al, 2012); (Frank, 2013). Figure 1 shows a 2-DOF parallel kinematic robot which is capable to throw and capture such objects over distances of 3 m. It consists of an arm-axis which has a length of 50 cm and a gripper-axis which can be turned in its tool center point (TCP).…”

Modeling and Control of a Cable-Suspended Sling-Like Parallel Robot for Throwing Operations

“…A number of works by Frank et al [28] considered the possibility of throwing an object from a gripper; the proposed application was rapid transportation of parts in a manufacturing system. In [29], this idea was developed specifically for throwing and catching cylinder-shaped objects. The position of the launched object in midair was observed by a visual tracking system [30].…”