Pin design for part feeding

  • Authors:

  • Mike Tao Zhang;Ken Goldberg;Gordon Smith;Robert-Paul Beretty;Mark Overmars

  • Affiliations:

  • Dept. of Industrial Eng. & Operations Research, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1777 (USA);Dept. of Industrial Eng. & Operations Research, and Dept. of Electrical Eng. & Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1777 (USA);Dept. of Mechanical Eng., University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1740 (USA);Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 3175, Sitterson Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175 (USA);Dept. of Computer Science, Utrecht University, 3508 TB Utrecht (The Netherlands)

  • Venue:
  • Robotica
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Industrial parts can be fed (oriented) using a sequence of fixed horizontal pins to topple the parts as they move past on a conveyor belt. We give an algorithm for designing a sequence of such pins for a given part. Given the n-sided convex polygonal projection of a part, its center of mass and frictional coefficients, our O(n2) algorithm computes the toppling graph, a new data structure that explicitly represents the mechanics of toppling, rolling, and jamming. We verify the toppling graph analysis with experiments. Our O(n3n) design algorithm uses the toppling graph to design a sequence of pin locations that will cause the part to emerge in a unique orientation or to determine that no such sequence exists.