How to pick-up-a-poppadum
Could a robot pick up a poppadum without breaking it? Could it pick up four in succession and put them down together? Could it do this at 100 picks a minute, 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
That was the challenge for RTS Flexible Systems. And it has proved that it can be done. Not only that, but the robot can significantly reduce labour costs .
RTS developed the system in response to a challenge from a customer to replace a heavily labour-intensive process. Poppadums were delivered from a frying machine by conveyor, then picked manually one by one and stacked into piles of four. The piles were then manually placed into a vacuum forming machine.
By using a combination of RTS Pixcell vision systems and ABB Flexpicker robots, the RTS system is now able to collect four poppadums one by one from the conveyor and place them in the vacuum forming machine.
The key is the end-effector which enables the poppadums to be handled extremely gently. Also, the vision software determines which poppadums can be picked successfully from the conveyor by instructing the robot to avoid any that are on top of or overlapping others.
CONTACT RTS Flexible Systems TEL 0161 777 2000
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