Automatic Offline Program Generation in Robotic System for Palletizing Rice Bags

Abstract

The stacking of end products is an important stage of automation process in the manufacturing industry. In order to improve the traditional stacking process that relies majorly on manual, various fields in the industry have import automated robotic arms into stacking operations. However, the difference dimensions of the bags and the pallets often makes it difficult for the operator to set up and adjust the robot parameters and positioning for stacking. Moreover, the arrangement of the soft bag is different from that of the hard boxes due to its flexibility and non-uniform dimensions, which makes it difficult to adjust the robot positions and parameters. This paper introduces an automatic stacking system for soft bags that can be used with medium to large payload robot arms for faster stack configuration and robot code generation. Automatic stacking calculations are performed for different soft bag sizes and pallet specifications to produce the best arrangement and combination, and the stacking orientation in different layers are optimized for stability and feasibility of stacks to achieve longer heights. Finally, the generated robot trajectory is imported into the robot arm controller, and the stacking can be performed automatically while reducing the technological and programming burden from the factory operators.