Modern Materials Handling - April 2011

accurate fork positioning. The AGVforks can be individually adjusted to fitthe various fork pockets of the carriersso it efficiently moves product, regardlessof whether the carrier is a pallet,crate, trolley or box pallet.Honda has also experiencedimprovements to personnel productivity.Prior to the AGV system, lift truckdrivers delivered racks of products,which were large and required a numbermoves per hour to keep up. Sinceinstalling the AGVs, Honda has beenable to reassign drivers to new positionsand let the AGVs handle the long distancetransport of goods. MWAREHOUSEVision-guidedrobot lends handCoffee roaster usesrobotic solution to solvein-feed problems anddouble throughput.MANAGEMENTBy Lorie King Rogers,Associate EditorIn manufacturing, a weak link candecrease productivity and increasecost. For a large coffee roaster processing650,000 bags of beans eachyear, that weak link was a robot usedto unload pallets stacked with bags ofraw beans to a conveyor that feeds theroaster. The robot’s gripper arm wastearing the burlap bags and spillingcoffee beans on the floor. This causedsafety issues, wasted about 100,000pounds of beans every year and directedexpensive labor to clean up duty.So plant managers turned to anadvanced vision-guided robotic infeedsystem (Concept Systems, www.conceptsystemsinc.com) for a helpingrobotic hand. The new system usestwo cameras, two lasers and softwareto scan the bags, calculate the contoursand create a 3D profile of the pallets,which are each loaded with twenty150-pound bags in four five-bag layers.A computer model is constructed forevery tier of bags then run through analgorithm that identifies its unique featuresand determines the precise positionand orientation of each bag.This information determines theoptimal pickup point on the bags andis used to dispatch the robot to eachbag for pickup. The robot’s end effectorpierces the bags and picks themup using pneumatically operated tinesto push the burlap out of the way andpenetrate the bag without tearing it.As each layer is removed, the 3Dmodel is updated for the next layer. Todetermine which bag to pick up firstwhen presented with a new pallet or afull tier of bags on a partial pallet, thesoftware directs the robot arm to thehighest bag.The vision-guided robotic in-feedsystem has helped the coffee roastersdouble its green bean in-feed rate. And,by keeping the coffee beans from spillingall over the floor, the company hascleaned up waste and safety issues andsignificantly reduced labor costs. MSOFTWAREwww.interlakemecalux.commmh.com Modern Materials Handling / A p r i l 2 0 1 1 37