A trial study on automated control panel button assembly

• Main Author: Yuan, Jiaxiu
• Other Authors: Chen I-Ming
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/68789
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Collaborative robots have been studies for a long time to increase the productivity, and at the same time, to keep the flexibility in industrial applications. However, it is still difficult to program or configure a robot to do a task for workers who are not professional in programming robots. In this project, we choose control panel button assembly to study the feasibility of developing a system, which can finish a pick-and-place task, at same time, involves minimum input. Kawada Nextage, as a commonly used collaborative robot is used in this project. A system based on open source libraries, such as Robot Operating System (ROS), openCV, PLC, etc., is developed. Kinect sensor and Robotiq gripper are used to sense and finish the pick-and-place task. During the tests, the system was able to pick and place panel buttons according a picture showing the layout of the final product. The preliminary experiments results show that the pick-and-place task can be finished in an acceptable success rate. At the same time, the content of the task can be easily switched by changing the input image.