Symbotic Canada, Ulc

Axium Inc.

Symbiotic Canada Ulc.

Philippe Hakier

Christian Simon

Robert Jodoin

Marc Ducharme

Jean-François Forget

Sylvain-Paul Morency

Régis Métivier

Regis Metivier

Dominic Prevost

Robert Battaglia

Paul Leblanc

Sylvain Morency

Nicolas Durand

A vision-assisted robotized depalletizer receives at a pallet station a pallet loaded with products and outputs on a conveyor unitized products aligned in a desired orientation. Such depalletizers include a vision system having one or more image acquisition sensors that are positioned relative to the pallet station so as to have a field of view covering a top portion of the pallet. The sensors send to a controller one or more image of the top portion of the pallet that the controller uses along to determine the position of each product in the top portion of the pallet. The depalletizer further includes a robot equipped with a depalletizing tool that is coupled to the vision system controller for receiving information indicative of the position of each product from the top portion and uses that information to pick and position on the output conveyor each product from the top portion.

Vision-assisted robotized depalletizer

The problem of singulating products that are provided in a pallet layer is solved by breaking up the pallet layer so that each product can be handled separately by a robot tool and outputted in at least one line according to a predetermined orientation. The singulator includes a layer drop zone that receives a pallet layer of products, a break-up system that separates the products by creating gaps therebetween, yielding separated products, a vision system that determines characteristics and position of each separated product; and a robot equipped with a tool that receives information indicative of the characteristics and position of said each separated product to grip and position each separated product onto an output station within at least one line.

Singulator

The separation tool allows separation of a horizontal pile of recipients into sub-piles of recipients, the first or last recipient of each sub-pile have been previously marked with ultra-violet detectable ink. The tool comprises a frame; a sensor mounted to the frame for detecting the last recipient of a current sub-pile or the first recipient of the next sub-pile upstream therefrom, which ever has been previously marked, and a manipulator arm provided with a fixed finger assembly for holding the recipients upstream from the last recipient of the current sub-pile and a separation finger for creating a gap between the held recipients and those from the current sub-pile.

Method and tool for the separation of a pile of recipients

Growing community of inventors

Montreal, Canada

Philippe Hakier