Kevin Lynch Homepage
Kevin Lynch Homepage
Keywords: Mechanical engineering, Feeding parts
This page introduces some of the work carried out on parts feeding in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Northwestern University, USA. The work undertaken has focused on feeding parts on a conveyor belt using a system that is very simple and flexible. This permits programming to allow feeding different types of parts. They have shown that a one-joint revolute robot,operating above a fixed-speed conveyor belt, can position and orient any polygonal part. This system has been called 1JOC (1-Joint Over Conveyor), with the power of the system coming from its "understanding" of stable pushing mechanics. The 2JOC is a variant of the 1JOC that can orient 3D parts by knocking them over (toppling).
