The present invention relates generally to automated handling systems and, more particularly, to a two dimensional robotic palm handling device providing variable spacing in the X and Y direction for a matrix of grippers.
Automated handling systems typically consist of three major high level parts: i) Robot; ii) Work; and iii) Tool. The robot could be any mechanical manipulator, (servo-controlled or manually assist), which can position a tool at a point within the robot working area in a desired orientation. Robots are applied in factory automation in many manipulation configurations, such as Cartesian, articulating, scara, tripods, hexapods, gantry.
The Work may be any product which is being worked on during manufacturing processes, such as machining, assembly, testing, inspection, packaging, sorting and handling. Examples of Work elements are engine machined parts, glass for TV screens, pc boards for cell phones, plastic bottles, food products etc.
The Tool is the element that applies energy to the part in the manufacturing process, which converts the part from raw material to a finished product. Examples of tools are machining bits, drills, cutters, lasers, water-jets, inkjet printer heads, painting nozzles and grippers.
In the analogy of robots to humans, the controller of the robot is the brain, the sensors are the nerves, the cameras are the eyes, the manipulator is the arms and legs, a gripper is the fingers and the element which manipulates a set of grippers is the palm. The objective of the gripper is to hold the Work during the manufacturing and handling process.
There are many types of grippers known in the art. These include parallel clamps, rotating clamps, magnetic and vacuum. Most grippers are used for picking individual Work units, while some gripper arrangements are used for picking multiple Work units. In applications involving multiple Work units, an array of grippers arranged in an XY matrix may be provided and a palm mechanism is required to synchronize their motion.
One example of such application involves the picking and placing of bottles of various sizes. In this case, an array of grippers may be arranged on a robotic palm handling device for simultaneously picking up a number of bottles. However, when the number or arrangement of bottles is changed, or if the size of the bottles varies, a new array of grippers must be replaced on the robotic palm handling device. This may result in plant downtime and may also require multiple tooling.
In other applications, analytic and diagnostic procedures in the laboratory often require the transfer of a plurality of samples, simultaneously, from one array of liquid-containing wells or test tubes to another. In order to transfer, add, collect or combine liquids, various multi-transferring systems have been devised. The most commonly used is a multi-pipette, which collects liquid from an array of source wells for transfer to an array of target wells, simultaneously, by application or release of application, respectively, of vacuum force. In operation, the pipette for collecting or releasing of liquid is connected to a single vacuum source provided to all the pipettes in the system so that all samples in the array of wells are collected and released at once.
However, often times the source wells or test tubes are arranged in a pallet with a certain spacing, suitable for loading, and it is necessary to transfer liquid or move test tubes to a different location, such as in an inspection device, wherein the target wells or test tubes have a different spacing.
To accomplish this, a robotic handling device, analogous to the human palm, may be provided to orient multiple grippers to pick up multiple work units, which are located in any oriented plane in space, with a certain spacing between them, and place them in another oriented plane within the work area with different spacing. There are several unidirectional devices known in the art that can change the spacing between grippers in a single X direction with variable spacing. Some prior art devices change the spacing between the grippers in the X and Y directions with a fixed ratio between the X and Y spacing.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a handling palm device, which may be used in manufacturing and handling processes, to hold multiple grippers or holders, arranged as a matrix with uniform spacing in the X direction and uniform spacing in the Y direction, and then change the spacing of the grippers or holders to a different uniform value in X and a different uniform value in Y. It would be further desirable to provide an integrated XY system, which may change the individual X and Y spacing with a variable spacing ratio.