Arm-Mounted:
Unparalleled field of view and resolution
Conventional vision systems for robot guidance are fixed mounted above the robot. The robot, camera, and work surface must be rigidly mounted together with a gantry. The robot must not obstruct the field of view of the camera in order for it to locate objects, requiring the robot to move out of the way (for static objects) or requiring the camera to be located upstream of the robot, when picking from a conveyor.
Conventional Vision Guided Robot with Overhead Camera
The conventional approach is needlessly expensive, complicated, and inflexible. These issues are rooted in their fundamental approach to machine vision. It’s rooted in how they see.
At Visual Robotics, we see things differently. We see things like you do - like a human does. Robots using our cameras observe the scene from a distance, then move closer to get a better view of the object. Our systems don’t need mechanical registration to the work surface. They don’t require an overhead gantry. Workcells designed with our cameras are affordable, simple, and flexible.
Vision Guided Robot with VIM-303 Arm-Mounted Camera
In addition to mechanical simplicity, our arm-mounted approach has resolution and field of view benefits as well. Conventional fixed-mounted vision systems have an inherent tradeoff between resolution and field of view. In order to see a large field of view, the camera must be placed far away, and thus has lower resolution. In order to increase the resolution, the camera must be placed closer, resulting in a small field of view. Increasing the field of view with high resolution requires either higher resolution cameras (expensive) or multiple cameras (expensive and complex).
Fixed camera with large field of view but low resolution
Fixed camera with high resolution but small field of view
Our arm-mounted camera provides both a large field of view and high resolution - with a single camera. Our cameras see the way you see. The distance from the camera to the object is controlled by the robot arm. Moving closer provides increased resolution. Moving farther yields lower resolution but a larger field of view. Our camera’s field of view extends to the entire reach of the robot.
Arm-mounted camera at one location
Arm-mounted camera over entire robot reach
The effective resolution of our VIM-303 camera on a UR10 robot is astounding. The robot’s reach radius is 1300mm. The 3D camera of VIM-303 can provide 0.3mm resolution and the 2D inspection camera can provide 0.01mm resolution over this entire field of view:
1MP 3D Camera = effectively 59 Megapixels
12MP 2D Camera = effectively 53,000 Megapixels
Our systems provide high resolution, but only when and where needed, optimizing processing load.
An arm-mounted camera will always have better resolution than a fixed-mounted camera. Much better.
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Arm-Mounted
Vision-in-Motion
Integrated Design
Semantic Programming