Method for teaching a robotic arm to pick or place an object

• US 10,059,005 B2
• Filed: 06/22/2016
• Issued: 08/28/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/22/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Techman Robot Inc.
• Original Assignee: Quanta Storage Incorporated (AUO Corp.)
• Inventors: Huang, Chung-Hsien, Huang, Shih-Jung
• Primary Examiner(s): Mancho, Ronnie M
• Application Number:
  US15/189,292
• Publication Number:
  US 20170368687A1
• Time in Patent Office: 797 Days
• Field of Search: 700245, 700259
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/1612 characterised by the hand, wrist, grip control
• CPC Class Codes: B25J 9/1697 Vision controlled systems
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 19/423 Teaching successive positions by walk-through, i.e. the tool head or end effector being grasped and guided directly, with or without servo-assistance, to follow a path
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 2219/39543 Recognize object and plan hand shapes in grasping movements

Abstract

A method for teaching a robotic arm to pick or place an object includes the following steps. Firstly, the robot arm is pushed until a target appears within a vision. Then, an appearance position of the target is set as a visual point. Then, a first image is captured. Then, the robot arm is pushed to a target position from the visual point. Then, the target position is set as a pick and place point. Then, an automatic movement control of the robot arm is activated. Then, the robot arm automatically picks and places the object and returns to the visual point from the pick and place point. Then, a second image is captured. Then, a differential image is formed by subtracting the second image from the first image, the target image is set according to the differential image, and image characteristic of the target are automatically learned.

Claims

1. A method for teaching a robot arm to pick and place an object, comprising:

pushing the robot arm until an object appears within a vision of an image capturing device;

setting an appearance position of the object as a visual point;

controlling the image capturing device to capture a first image at the visual point;

pushing the robot arm to the object from the visual point;

setting an arm position of the robot arm as a pick and place point;

activating an automatic movement control of the robot arm;

by the activated automatic movement control, automatically picking the object by the robot arm and returning the robot arm to the visual point from the pick and place point;

controlling the image capturing device to capture a second image at the visual point; and

forming a differential image by subtracting the second image from the first image, setting an object image according to the differential image and automatically learning an image characteristic of the object;

wherein the robot arm is connected to a control device, the vision of the image capturing device is shown on the screen connected to the control device, and the captured first and second images are recorded in the control device;

wherein the teaching movement path is the path along which robot arm is pushed to the pick and place point from the visual point and is recorded in the control device.

2. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 1, wherein the teaching method is for teaching the robot arm a process of picking the object.

3. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 2, wherein the object is the object picked from a placing portion by the robot arm during the picking process.

4. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 3, wherein the first image is an image captured before the object is picked and shows the image of the object within the placing portion.

5. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 4, wherein the second image is an image captured after the object is captured and shows the image of the placing portion.

6. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 5, wherein the differential image of the object is formed by subtracting the second image from the first image.

7. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 1, wherein the teaching method is for teaching the robot arm a process for placing the object.

8. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 7, wherein the object is a placing platform on which the robot arm places the object during the placing process.

9. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 8, wherein the first image is an image captured before the object is placed and shows the image of the placing portion.

10. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 9, wherein the second image is an image captured after the object is captured and show the image of the placing portion with the object.

11. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 1, wherein the differential image of the object is formed by subtracting the second image from the first image, and the image of the placing portion surrounding the object is set.

12. The method for teaching the robot arm to pick and place the object according to claim 1, wherein the robot arm automatically returns to the visual point from the pick and place point along the teaching movement path.