Box Depalletizing—One by One

Selected by default to send waypoint poses to the receiver, such as the robot. When this option is unselected, the waypoint pose will not be sent. However, the waypoint will remain in the planned path.

Unselected by default. When non-move Steps, such as Vision Look, Set DO, Check DI, etc., are connected between move-type Steps, the robot’s path planning will be interrupted, and the actual robot will take a short pause, reducing the smoothness of running.

When this option is selected, the project will continue to run without waiting for the current move-type Step to complete execution, and therefore the robot can move in a smooth way without pauses. However, enabling this option may cause the execution of the Step to end prematurely.

Why will this option cause the execution of the Step to end prematurely?

Mech-Viz will send multiple poses simultaneously to the robot when the project is running. When the currently returned JPs of the robot correspond to the last pose sent by Mech-Viz, Mech-Viz will assume that the robot has moved to the last position.

For example, there are 10 move-type Steps in a path, and the pose of the 5th move-type Step is the same as that of the last move-type Step. When the robot moves at low speed, it sends JPs to Mech-Viz when it moves to the 5th move-type Step, Mech-Viz may mistakenly determine that the robot has finished the move-type Steps and prematurely ends the Steps since the poses of the 5th move-type Step and the last move-type Step are the same in the path.

Unselected by default, namely that the collision with the already placed objects will not be detected. When this option is selected, the collisions between the robot, end tool, and placed objects will be detected.

In palletizing scenarios, the two possible cases of error are as follows:

When this option is selected, no collision between the robot, end tool, and the placed object will be detected, and the above two cases of errors can be avoided.

Select the proper mode according to the requirement of the on-site situation. Usually, the default setting Auto can be used. Do not check collision mode can be used in move-type Steps before the robot picks the object, and Check collision mode can be used after the robot picks the object.

This parameter will only take effect when Waypoint type of the Step is set to Workobject pose.

Once this parameter is selected, a “Plan failure” exit port will be added to the Step.

During the planning process, planning is carried out along the branch after the “Success” exit port. If the planning fails in the current Step, the branch process after the “Planning failure” exit port will be executed.

Unselected by default. Once this option is selected, the collisions between the held workobject with the scene objects or robot will not be detected, and therefore the calculation workload of collision detection will be reduced, the planning speed can be increased, and the cycle time can be shortened. It is usually enabled in the first one or two move-type Steps after the robot picks the object.

Please enable this option cautiously as there may be collision risks.

When Detect collision between held workobject and others under Collision detection configuration  Configuration on held workobject is enabled, the software will detect whether the model of the held object collides with the models of the scene objects and the robot.

In palletizing projects, the calculated carton dimensions have millimeter-level errors with the actual dimensions, and frictions between cartons may occur during picking but no collisions will occur. For some move-type Steps that will obviously not cause collisions, detecting such collisions only adds to the calculation workload and planning time, and consequently extending the cycle time. In palletizing projects, enabling Do Not Check Collision with Scene Objects does not affect the collision detection between the held carton and the placed cartons. This option can be enabled when there are scene objects under the stack to avoid failure of finding the palletizing solution.

Unselected by default. Once this option is selected, the collisions between the held workobject with the point clouds in the scene will not be detected, and therefore the calculation workload of collision detection will be reduced, the planning speed can be increased, and the cycle time can be shortened.

Usually, Vision Move will only use one pose of the corresponding vision result. However, once this parameter is selected, the robot will move through all waypoints corresponding to the vision poses at one time.

This parameter is usually used when the robot moves in a fixed path where no DO signals will be sent, such as the gluing application.

When this feature is not enabled, each time “Vision Move” plans a robot picking path successfully, the rest unused vision results will be discarded. If this feature is enabled, the vision result that leads to a planning failure and the rest unused vision results will be retained and used for the next planning. This feature should be used with the “Is Vision Result Used Up” Step.

When there are multiple pickable objects in one vision result and it can be guaranteed that picking one object will not affect the poses of other objects, this option can be selected. The vision result will be reused and no new image will be captured until all vision results are used up.

Application Example

This feature enables multiple “Vision Move” Steps in which the same vision service is selected to share the vision result.

When one “Vision Move” Step plans successfully, the corresponding vision result will be used, and the unused vision result will be used by the next “Vision Move” Step with this feature enabled. After all “Vision Move” Steps that share the vision result complete planning, the rest results will be discarded.

In addition, this feature can be used in conjunction with the “Reuse Vision Result” feature. When “Reuse Vision Result” is selected, the rest vision results will not be discarded even after all “Vision Move” Steps have completed one round of planning.

Select to remove the point cloud of the target workobject to be picked, and only collision between the robot end tool and non-target workobjects will be detected.

To avoid picking non-target boxes, the software will remove the point cloud of the target box and keep the point cloud of its adjacent boxes. During path planning, the software will discard a solution that may lead to a wrong picking due to the detected collision between the model of the vacuum gripper’s buffer and the point cloud of adjacent boxes.

The default range for point cloud removal is a cuboid whose top surface is the top surface of the target box with an infinite height whose direction is the Z-direction of the box’s vision pose.

You can adjust the “XY-Plane Point Cloud Removal Range Expansion” and “Z-Direction Point Cloud Removal Range Expansion” to expand the point cloud removal range for removing the point cloud near the target workobject.

Based on the original workobject dimensions, the XOY plane of the workobject pose is the top surface for the point cloud removal range. This parameter specifies the extended length from actual workobject edges on this surface.

Based on the original workobject dimensions, the extended height in the positive Z-direction of the workobject pose for the point cloud removal range.

Once the “Update Bin Pose with Vision” parameter is selected, the bin will be recognized and located simultaneously while the camera captures the image for workobject recognition. Therefore, the bin pose in the simulation area can be updated dynamically, which facilitates the collision detection algorithm to effectively prevent the robot from colliding with the bin.

This feature will provide three fields, “scene_object_names,” “scene_object_sizes,” and “scene_object_poses,” in the vision result to define the name, dimensions, and position of the scene object to be updated.

This feature limits that the vision result received by the current “Vision Move” Step must be in a specified bin. The vision result out of the effective bin range will not be used.

The effective range for each bin can be configured separately in the corresponding configuration window. Only bins with “Set effective range for pose” enabled can be selected in the drop-down menu.

Application Example

Add “Bin1”, and select the “Set effective range for pose” parameter for this bin.

Select “Bin1” in the drop-down menu.

This parameter is used to filter the workobjects corresponding to the specified “labels” field in the vision results.

If you need to use this parameter, you need to add the corresponding workobjects in the resource tree whose name is the same as the “labels” field name, and then select the workobject in the dropdown menu on the right side of the parameter.

This parameter group is mainly used to avoid picking on the same pick point in scenarios where the object cannot be picked successfully.

Once the “Filter Out Unlikely Pick Point” parameter is selected, you can adjust the following parameters.

This parameter specifies the minimum proportion of a box’s upper surface covered by the vacuum gripper when the vacuum gripper attempts to pick a box. If the coverage is below the threshold, it is considered that the vacuum gripper cannot attach to the box firmly and the picking is not allowed.

In addition, when the upper surface of a single box is larger than the entire vacuum gripper, and all sections of the vacuum gripper are activated, the coverage can reach 100%.

Supposing that this parameter is set to 50%, the picking feasibilities are shown as below.

This parameter specifies the orientation of the vacuum gripper relative to the box group during picking.

The software sequentially applies three strategies—Center to center, Edge midpoint to edge midpoint, and Corner to corner—to attempt the vacuum gripper offset.

The software adheres to user-defined offset priorities to attempt the vacuum gripper offset.

There are three custom strategies in total, which are Center to center, Edge midpoint to edge midpoint, and Corner to corner. You can set the priority levels according to actual requirements.

In the figure below, the orange rectangle represents the box, and the gray rectangle represents the vacuum gripper. The green part of the vacuum gripper indicates that the section is activated, while the red part indicates that the section is deactivated.

The software attempts the offset according to the user-specified Edge/Corner ID Sequence (e.g., 11, 21, 31, 41).

The edge/corner IDs are generated automatically in the vacuum gripper configurator. The two-digit numbers at the edge of each section are edge/corner IDs, as shown below.

You need to set a reference point to enable this feature. The offset strategies will be sorted according to the distance between the TCP and the reference point, and the offset strategy with a TCP closer to the reference point has a higher priority.

In actual depalletizing process, when the sensors attached to the vacuum gripper near the edge of the box, the software may mistakenly detect that the box is dropped due to large gap between boxes, loose suction at the edge, or other reasons.

To prevent these issues, you can select this parameter and set Box Edge Removal Distance.

DI sensors that are within the removal range will not be taken into account in the box drop detection.

The width of the red frame shown in the figure below represents the Box Edge Removal Distance. For actual application, please adjust this parameter according to the on-site requirement.

Select Limit Total Count and you can set the maximum Planned Count and other parameters.