Robot Path Clearance Control for Obstacle Cavity Picking
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Solution Overview
Problem
The existing approach of setting a uniform clearance amount for robots and obstacles leads to a trade-off between robot safety and success rate, where increasing safety reduces picking success and vice versa, especially in pick-and-place devices with obstacles having cavities.
Innovation Solution
A path generation device and method that acquires pose and obstacle information, sets clearance amounts dynamically based on the positional relationship between the robot and obstacles, and adjusts these amounts to prevent interference, allowing for individual clearance settings for the robot and obstacles, including those with cavities, and adjusts speed or acceleration to ensure safe operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the clearance amount is set large to raise safety, then the safety of robot actions is improved, but the picking success rate deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by setting different clearance amounts for different obstacles based on their specific characteristics. Obstacles with cavities receive smaller clearance amounts while obstacles without cavities receive larger clearance amounts, allowing the system to optimize both safety and picking success rate locally for each obstacle type rather than using a uniform clearance value globally.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the clearance amount parameter dynamically based on obstacle characteristics. The system automatically adjusts the clearance amount smaller for obstacles with cavities and larger for obstacles without cavities, transforming the fixed parameter into a variable one that adapts to different obstacle types to resolve the trade-off between safety and picking success.
2Productivity
If the clearance amount is set small to raise the picking success rate, then the picking success rate is improved, but the safety of robot actions deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies different clearance strategies locally: smaller clearance amounts are applied to obstacles with cavities to improve picking success, while larger clearance amounts are applied to obstacles without cavities to maintain safety. This localized differentiation resolves the contradiction by allowing small clearances only where they do not compromise safety.
Solution Approach 2:
The clearance amount parameter is changed based on obstacle type detection. The system automatically sets smaller clearance amounts for obstacles with cavities and larger clearance amounts for obstacles without cavities, dynamically adjusting the parameter to achieve both high picking success rate and maintained safety.
3Device complexity
If a uniform clearance amount is set for all obstacles, then the device complexity is reduced, but the ability to optimize both safety and picking success deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service by automatically detecting obstacle characteristics and autonomously determining appropriate clearance amounts without requiring manual configuration. The robot control device itself identifies obstacles with cavities and adjusts clearance amounts accordingly, eliminating the need for complex external setup while achieving optimized safety and picking success.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses feedback from obstacle detection to automatically adjust clearance amounts. By detecting whether obstacles have cavities and using this information to determine appropriate clearance values, the system creates a feedback loop that optimizes both safety and picking success without increasing operational complexity for the user.
Data Source
AI summary
A path generation device including an acquisition unit, a setting unit, and a path generation unit. The acquisition unit is configured to acquire pose information relating to an initial pose and a target pose of a robot, position information relating to a position of the robot, obstacle information including a position of an obstacle present in a range of interference with the robot, and specification information relating to a specification including a shape of the robot. The setting unit is configured to, based on a positional relationship between the robot and the obstacle, set a clearance amount representing an amount of clearance to avoid the interference for at least one out of the robot or an obstacle present in a range of interference with the robot.