Conveyor and vision tracking system uses two SCARA robots to track items as they move along a conveyor, determine the parts orientation and discriminate between different products.

TM Robotics, who are responsible for the sales, marketing and support of Toshiba Machine's Industrial Robots throughout Europe, will be launching an innovative conveyor and vision tracking system at Automatica this year. The system, based on two of the company's TH450 (SCARA) robots connected to a standard industrial vision system, will demonstrate not only the function of tracking items as they move along a conveyor, but also the robot's ability to determine the parts orientation and discriminate between different products. With the new conveyor tracking system it is possible to construct an inexpensive and high speed line using existing industrial vision sensors, linked via industry-standard Ethernet.

The Robots' movements can be interpolated to the conveyors direction and speed; therefore products can be picked without ever needing to stop the conveyor.

The vision sensor provide the part coordinate data, can be positioned anywhere on the conveyor, upstream of the Robots.

Parts are then picked as they enter the Robots' working area.

The system automatically identifies each work piece and can also perform part sharing or discriminative handling of the items between several Robots on the same conveyor.

The system has also been designed for multiple conveyors - for example, the conveyor tracking synchronisation can be executed on one conveyor for picking a part and then synchronized to a second conveyor for placing the part.

Examples of the extensive Toshiba Machine TH SCARA range and other (Cartesian) robots will also be at the show.

The TH series offers arm length from 250mm to 1050mm and can carry payloads from 3 to 20kg, with a positional accuracy of between 0.01mm and 0.03mm.

These are extremely quick, accurate and cost effective, yet have extensive functionality.

They are ideally suited to the handling and assembly of components and can position these with extremely high levels of precision.

The Automatica stand will also demonstrate the integration abilities of TM Robotics Swiss partner company Lanco.

This internationally acclaimed company provides flexible turnkey assembly machines and systems.