Parts Orienting with Partial Sensor Information
Proceedings of the 1998 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation, Leuven, Belgium, May 1998.
Srinivas Akella and Matthew T. Mason
Abstract
Parts orienting, the process of bringing parts in initially
unknown orientations to a goal orientation, is an important aspect of
automated assembly. Bowl feeders used in industry rely on a sequence
of mechanical operations, without using sensors, to orient parts. In
our work, we use partial information sensors along with mechanical
operations to eliminate uncertainty in part orientation. We show that
sensor-based orienting plans need $O(m)$ operations, where $m$ is the
maximum number of states with the same sensor value. We characterize
the relation between part shape, orientability, and recognizability to
identify conditions under which a single plan can orient and recognize
multiple part shapes. We describe implemented planners and
experiments to demonstrate generated plans.