Folding Cartons with Fixtures: A Motion Planning Approach
Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation, Detroit, MI, May 1999.
Liang Lu and Srinivas Akella
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL 61801
Abstract
Packaging products such as telephones and two-way radios after
assembly is a common manufacturing task. Carton folding is a
packaging operation performed by human operators or with fixed
automation. We present a flexible method to fold cardboard cartons
using fixtures; a carton blank is folded by moving it through a
fixture with a robot. This method of using interchangeable fixtures
enables rapid changeovers between product models. We outline a
procedure to design a fixture given a carton and a folding
sequence. We present an implemented motion planning algorithm that
generates all folding sequences for a carton by modeling it as a many
degree of freedom robot manipulator with revolute joints and branching
links. A fixture constrains the carton to move along paths consisting
of line segments in its configuration space, and the motion planner
generates these paths. To illustrate the method, we selected a folding
sequence for an example carton, designed a fixture, and demonstrated
folding of the carton from blanks with an industrial robot.