A Microprocessor Controlled Visual Sensor for Industrial Robots

The handling of initially disordered mechanical parts with a robot manipulator needs some procedure for orientating these parts. A simple microprocessor‐controlled TV‐sensor which enables an industrial robot to perform this function by measurement of orientation and position of the parts is described. Constraining the parts to a finite number of stable positions by mechanical devices preceding the visual sensor, restriction to binary images, processing of only a few information carrying TV‐lines and a simple recognition algorithm lead to an easily programmable microprocessor‐controlled visual sensor which accomplishes all practical requirements of flexibility, high speed, low memory size and low costs.