Methods of positioning a gripper to pick or place a specimen container from a sample rack. One method includes providing a robot including the gripper, the gripper moveable in a coordinate system by the robot and including gripper fingers, providing a sample rack including receptacles containing specimen containers, providing data, obtained by imaging, regarding the specimen containers in the sample rack, and dynamically orienting the gripper based upon the data. The data may include population and/or configuration data and the dynamic orientation may include gripper finger opening distance, gripper finger rotational position, and/or gripper offset distance. Gripper positioning apparatus for carrying out the method are disclosed, as are other aspects.

A single robot of a two-lane bin packing system has an end of arm tool (EOAT) that interfaces with two infeed lines and two bins on an ongoing basis so that the robot can pick a group of bags from a first bag group staging area on the first infeed line while a group of bags is being formed in a second bag group staging area by the second infeed line. In addition, by interfacing with two separate bins, one bin can be filled while another, full bin is being replaced with an empty bin. The EOAT thus operates constantly. The bag groups can be formed in layers by discharging bags on a reciprocating shuttle of a pick table assembly.

An article package filling method, comprising: selecting a packaging container for an order article in an order container; picking out the order article from the order container and putting same into the packaging container; and injecting a filling medium into a filling space of the packaging container by using a filling equipment, wherein the filling medium has a specific shape before being injected into the filling space, and can form a spatial shape consistent with that of the filling space after being injected into the filling space. According to the filling method, various specifications or types of packaging containers storing the order articles can be filled, so that the supporting and protecting effects on the order articles are implemented, and the package filling efficiency and applicability are improved.

An arrangement for transferring and/or grouping products (32) is proposed, comprising at least one mover (20) which has at least one permanent magnet (19) which is connected to the mover (20), wherein the permanent magnet (19) interacts with at least one coil plane (18) of a drive surface (13) for the in particular contactless driving of the mover (20), wherein the mover (20) is arranged displaceably and/or rotatably in at least two degrees of freedom on the drive surface (13), furthermore comprising at least one conveying system (34, 38) which conveys products (32), characterized in that the mover (20) picks up or deposits at least one product (32) by means of a movement of the mover (20) with at least one vertical component.

A system for packing a case with articles, the system including a conveying device to convey articles to be packed, in a serial configuration and a support for a case to be packed with the articles in which the articles are configured to be placed in a plurality of rows, including a first row, a second row adjacent to the first row and a last row adjacent to a side wall of the case. A robotic mechanism is provided configured to pick-up a batch of articles from the conveying device and to deposit the batch of articles into the case, the robotic mechanism including an article supporting device moveable between an extended position and a retracted position, the robotic mechanism being configured to execute a first and a second article loading cycle in the case, wherein the first article loading cycle is characterized by lowering a batch of articles in the case and retracting the article supporting device to allow the batch of articles to sit on a bottom of the case and the second article loading cycle is characterized by retracting the article supporting device while the batch of articles is at a distance from the bottom of the case and allowing the batch of articles to fall in the case while being guided by an adjacent row of articles already deposited in the case and the side wall of the case.

A gripping head for a loading robot or manipulator of a cartoning machine capable of nesting articles arranged on two substantially parallel rows, the gripping head comprising a row of gripping members, wherein each of the gripping members comprises a gripping section adapted to receive two adjacent articles and on opposite sides with respect to a centerline plane, and wherein at least the gripping members having even index position or odd index position in the row rotate by about 180 degrees around an axis.

An article boxing system includes an image processing apparatus, a first robot, and a first controller. The image processing apparatus detects edges of an article based on an image of the article. The image processing apparatus calculates information relating to a conveyance state. The first robot includes a hand unit and an arm adjusting three-dimensional coordinates and an inclination of the hand unit with respect to a conveyance direction. The first controller controls an operation of the arm to move the hand unit in correspondence with the information relating to the conveyance state and causes the hand unit to adsorb the article, when the article reaches an operation range of the first robot.

A system includes a cutting sub-system arranged for cutting a box into a first half and a second half and including at least one pair of cutting elements, a dunnage gripper sub-system arranged downstream of the cutting sub-system and including a dunnage gripper configured to selectively grip and release a portion of the box, and a robotic system including at least a first robotic arm and a second robotic arm. The first robotic arm includes a plurality of grippers configured to selectively grip and release items contained in the box. The second robotic arm includes a plurality of grippers configured to selectively position the items into a tote positioned at a second predetermined location.

A robot gripper that takes stacked patties from a conveyor and moves then to a packaging device.

The invention relates to a packaging machine (100) for arranging elements, preferably cartons (K), on pallets (Z), wherein the packaging machine (100) has the following: a palletizing station (180) that has a platform (181) and a Scara robot (182), which is positioned on the platform (181) and which is embodied to move elements, preferably cartons (K), to be stowed on pallets (Z); a pallet feed (190), which is embodied to feed empty pallets (Z) along a path, wherein the platform (181) is embodied in a bridge-like manner and the path extends through under the platform (181) of the palletizing station (180) to a pallet loading station (191).