Author(s):
Hamza Alzarok¹, Simon Fletcher², Andrew. P. Longstaff²

Doi: 10.7508/aiem.01.2020.19.30

Author Affiliation:
¹Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Faculty of Engineering, Bani Walid University, Libya
²Centre for Precision Technologies, School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, England

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Vision systems have now been involved to a greater extent in robotic manufacturing applications due to their noncontact features and high accuracy. The visual information extracted from the vision sensor significantly assists robot manipulators to perform a variety of tasks with an accuracy that satisfactorily meets the industrial demands. A successful accomplishment of these tasks is heavily dependent on the feedback from the vision sensors to enhance the efficiency of detection, tracking and control of the robot motion by utilising their visual information. The feedback, therefore, enhances the safety of the system by preventing the robots from being damaged and operators from being injured which, in turn, saves the production time. In the modern industry, there is an increasing requirement for advanced robot-based target detection and tracking, target grasping and also for the capability to execute assembling tasks in unprepared environments with randomly positioned/oriented targets. Grasping and Assembly tasks represent the most important applications for industrial robots that often require the additional feature of vision systems as a navigation guidance for tracking and intercepting of moving targets. This paper targets these application areas and presents a review of the state-of-the-art equipment, methodologies and practices used within the associated research areas of robotic systems in the context of vision systems. It also examines the recent contributions of the vision systems in robotic tasks and highlights on their performance, the use of algorithms for image processing and calibration procedures adopted, and their contribution towards the effectiveness of robotic positioning resolution and accuracy.

KEYWORDS:
Vision Systems, Industrial Robots, Machine Vision, Object Grasping, Pick-and-place Tasks, Robotic Assembly.