Introduction

Polyscope Waypoints can be combined with an ActiNav bin picking program to implement Polyscope palletizing, re-grip fixtures, and others.  This TechNote gives an example of a program that sometimes moves a part directly to a placement fixture, and sometimes to a re-grip fixture.

Rules

For bin picking, the ActiNav Autonomous Motion Module (AMM) plans all of the robot movements.  Standard Polyscope Waypoints cannot be freely mixed in with the ActiNav logic inside of the ActiNav Pick and Place loop.  But it is possible to switch to Polyscope movements and then back to ActiNav at the end of a Pick and Place loop.  The rules are:

• The last pose of the robot after placement must be set by an ActiNav Custom Pose. This must be of the Type Robot Pose.
• The first Waypoint in Polyscope must be the identical robot pose.
• After Polyscope commands are complete, the robot must be returned to the first Waypoint, the one that was the same as the last Custom Pose.

Example Program

Please refer to the figure below:

1. This program has two pick and place rules. One of them moves the part to the final placement fixture, and the other moves the part to a re-grip fixture.  Once the pick and place sequence has ended, the program must detect whether the part is in the re-grip fixture, and if so, move it to the final placement fixture, using standard Polyscope programming.
2. A Custom Pose in robot coordinates moves the robot to some position that is convenient to both the re-grip fixture and the final placement fixture, since the robot could have been in either position before this. The AMM will move to the Custom Pose with full collision avoidance and path planning.
3. An IF statement detects whether there is a part in the re-grip fixture or not. In this case, a binary sensor is used.  If there is a part in the re-grip fixture, it must be moved to the final placement fixture in steps 4 - 6.
4. To switch to Polyscope control of the robot, the first Waypoint is identical to the ActiNav Custom Pose. This is the handoff of control.
5. The part is moved from the Re-grip fixture to the final placement fixture with standard Polyscope programming.
6. To switch back to ActiNav control of the robot, the robot is returned to the previous Custom Pose position by sending it to the same waypoint as in step 4.
7. Control is returned to ActiNav. The pick & place loop ends, and the next pick is executed.