Collaborative robots, the well-known CoBots, are now the latest trend, because they adapt easily to changes in production. Operational flexibility is what makes them perfect for many application sectors, in particular for packaging which requires more than others for numerous format changes.
In particular, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are taking over the supply of packaging lines and other production tasks, as they adapt to frequent changes. This is because they move thanks to maps that the software builds on site or through the preloaded maps of the structures, using data from cameras, integrated sensors and laser scanners, as well as software capable of detecting the surrounding environment and choosing the most efficient path towards the goal.
An AMR can be implemented in a few hours. It works completely independently and if you have obstacles such as people, pallets or forklifts in front of you, you can safely avoid them, using the best alternative route.
The AMR therefore needs only simple modifications to the software to change the tasks, so the same robot can perform a series of tasks in different places, automatically making the necessary adjustments to meet the production requirements in different environments.
Companies have highly variable productions, which means they need to produce and package flexibly and must be able to move objects.
It may be necessary, for example, to connect a production line to a packaging line for a week, but do the following week differently: in this case it would be too time-consuming to move the conveyor belts and change the gripping hands. With mobile robots and Vuototecnica’s gripping and vacuum solutions, companies avoid costly downtime when they need to update the layout of the facility.
In fact, Vuototecnica allows the use of some gripping hands that can adapt from time to time to format changes, without the need for replacement. In the most extreme cases, the replacement, when necessary, will take you only a few minutes, without having to reconfigure the entire gripping hand.
This is the case of Octopus, a vacuum gripping system that can take and handle food packaging, cardboard, porous sheets, aluminum cans and liquid-filled blisters. All packaging formats can be moved.
The gripping surfaces can be in sponge rubber, formed by rows of suction cups, they can mount Bernoulli systems, without contact, or even be customized in 3D.
Thanks to this last solution in 3D, in particular, customer handling problems are dealt with on a case-by-case basis, with ad hoc customized gripping heads to accommodate the shape of the object to be picked up, to wrap and hold it. The gripping hands are made of ABS and for this reason they can be at the same time resistant and light.
But there are many other Vuototecnica solutions suitable for CoBots, the latest generation robots and their extreme flexibility, that you can find in the Vacuum solutions catalogue.
To learn more: www.vuototecnica.net
