Hex nut screwing with a high-speed vision and a high-speed robot hand

Although the demand for flexible production facilities has increased in recent years, the related technologies have not reached their full potential: existing flexible manufacturing systems have productivity issues, and high-speed robots have versatility problems. Towards addressing this problem, this study focuses on manipulation strategies to construct a highly efficient and flexible robot system to screw hex nuts. We develop a robot system using a high-speed robot hand and a high-speed camera to achieve this. First, we present a marker-less method of measuring the position and rotation angle of a nut with a single camera. Next, we introduce a nut-turning motion of the robot hand based on that information. Finally, we demonstrate the flexibility and efficiency of the proposed method through feasibility tests.