A robot system including a conveying device; a robot that processes an object being conveyed; a first and second supply unit that supply the object onto the conveying device; a movement amount detection unit that successively detects an amount of movement of the object supplied by the first supply unit; a single vision sensor that successively acquires visual information of the object being conveyed; an object detection unit that processes the acquired visual information to detect position and orientation of the object; an interval detection unit that detects an interval between objects on the conveying device; a control unit that controls the robot based on the amount of movement and the position and orientation; and a production management unit that causes the second supply unit to supply the object at a position of the interval.

A method for controlling motion of a robot relative to a conveyor flow direction of a moving conveyor includes the steps of: establishing a tracking frame for coordinating a position and movement of the robot relative to an object support surface of the conveyor; setting an upstream boundary perpendicular or skewed to a conveyor flow direction of the conveyor; setting a downstream boundary perpendicular or skewed to the conveyor flow direction; optionally setting a circular boundary partially overlapping the upstream boundary and the downstream boundary, wherein the upstream boundary, the downstream boundary and the circular boundary are positioned to define a picking area relative to the support surface; and operating the robot to pick objects from the picking area.

A method of processing objects using a programmable motion device is disclosed. The method includes the steps of providing an input conveyance system by which input bins of objects may be provided to a processing station that includes the programmable motion device that includes an end effector, perceiving at the processing station identifying indicia representative of an identity of a plurality of objects at an input area of the input conveyance system, grasping the an acquired object using the end effector, moving the acquired object toward an identified processing container using the programmable motion device, the identified processing container being associated with the identifying indicia and said identified processing container being provided as one of a plurality of processing containers at the processing station, and providing an output conveyance system in communication with the processing station, by which processing containers that contain processed objects may be provided.

A box handling system is disclosed for use in an object processing system. The box handling system includes a box tray including a recessed area for receiving a box, and the recessed area includes a plurality of floor and edge portions for receiving the box that contains objects to be processed.

A simulation apparatus includes a load deriving unit that derives a load moment that is generated in an elastic suction pad that holds a workpiece due to the difference between the acceleration rate of a robot arm to which the suction pad is attached and the acceleration rate of the workpiece when executing a simulation in which a simulation model including the workpiece, the suction pad, and the robot arm is moved at an accelerated rate based on an operation instruction, and an execution condition change unit that performs processing for changing, if the load moment derived by the load deriving unit is larger than a threshold value, an execution condition of the simulation such that the load moment derived by the load deriving unit does not exceed the threshold value.

A system for identifying a handled item includes a robotic arm having a gripper configured to grip an item, transfer the item and release the item, a conveyor track to receive the item from the robotic arm and to transport the item one or a plurality of sensors to scan one or a plurality of surfaces of the item in order to detect identifiable characteristics on the one or a plurality of surfaces of the item and a processor to receive scan data from the one or a plurality of sensors and to identify the item based on the detected identifiable characteristics.

A method and an apparatus for optimizing a target working line are disclosed. The target working line includes at least one robot manipulator, at least one conveyor and at least one item on the conveyor to be displaced by the robot manipulator. The method includes: obtaining an evaluation model for the target working line, the evaluation model yielding an overall success rate of moving the item from one conveyor to another conveyor based on at least one measuring parameter, the measuring parameter being a physical attribute of the target working line; yielding the overall success rate for the target working line as a function of a value for the measuring parameter for the target working line; and in case that the yielded overall success rate is lower than a predetermined threshold rate, updating a value for a configuring parameter based on the overall success rate, the configuring parameter corresponding to the measuring parameter, and the configuring parameter being states of the working line. The optimization of the evaluation model does not require an implementation of an on-site process or an involvement of an experienced engineer or worker. Instead, simulation software can be used to obtain customized parameters used for the target working line, resulting in an increased success rate within a short period of time.

The simulation reflects the actual behavior of a target in an application involving a target near a transporting surface of a carrier instead of being placed directly on the transporting surface. A simulator includes a creating unit that virtually creates a system in a three-dimensional virtual space, a tracking unit that updates positions of targets on the transporting surface in the three-dimensional virtual space based on a corresponding movement of the carrier, and updates a position of a target picked up by the processing device in association with a behavior of the processing device, and an instruction generation unit that generates a control instruction for the behavior of the processing device based on the position of each target. When the processing device places a target within a predetermined range from the transporting surface, the tracking unit associates the target with the transporting surface and updates a position of the target.

A robot system includes an image pickup apparatus that picks up images of a plurality of kinds of articles conveyed by a conveyor; an article controlling portion that controls time and a position of each of the plurality of kinds of articles being supplied onto the conveyor, to limit kinds of articles to be image-picked-up by the image pickup apparatus in advance; a detecting portion that detects the plurality of kinds of articles from among images picked up by the image pickup apparatus, on the basis of the kinds of articles limited in advance by the article controlling portion; and a robot that is configured to take out the plurality of kinds of articles detected by the detecting portion from the conveyor.

A device for picking up a component from a container and transferring the component to a production side. The device includes a gripping robot, which is designed to pick up a component from the container and to place the component picked up from the container onto a transfer device. The device includes a controller and an internal store with at least one component receptacle for the interim storage of components. The gripping robot is designed to respond to a storage signal from the controller by placing the component picked up from the container onto the component receptacle of the internal store, and is also designed to respond to an acceleration signal from the controller by placing the component received by the internal store onto the transfer device.