Gocator® Smart 3D Snapshot sensors use stereo structured light (fringe projection) to generate high-density 3D data with a single scan trigger. Production engineers can pair these metrology-grade sensors with UR devices for a complete robotic solution that delivers high-performance measurement results in robot vision-guidance, quality control inspection, and automated assembly with smart pick-and-place. Gocator® 3D snapshot sensors are easily mounted onto the UR robot flange (end-of-arm) using a metal plate. You can then connect to the sensor’s web interface from a client PC over an Ethernet connection, and add and configure the appropriate built-in measurement tools (e.g., Surface Plane, Surface Sphere, etc.) to return the required positional data. Finally, you connect the sensor to a robot controller or PC application to perform sensor hand-eye calibration, using the URCap plugin, and implement pick-and-place movement. Since you don’t have to write any robot programs or calibration routines, it doesn’t take any expertise in order to set up your robotic systems for factory automation applications. Any engineer can do it. Or, if you’re an advanced user who wants greater flexibility and control, you have the option of using the Gocator Development Kit (GDK) to develop and embed your own custom tools onto the sensor so that you can adapt the calibration routine to your own calibration target.
Sensor-robot integration is achieved through the Gocator® URCap plugin, which is an application you install on the UR robot. This plugin triggers scans on the sensor and retrieves the positional information of the calibration target in the sensor’s field of view. (Note: Ball-bars are the most commonly used targets in sensor-robot calibration.)
After a sufficient number of scans, the calibration is saved to the UR robot, and hand-eye calibration (between the sensor and the robot flange) is complete.
After you’ve performed your hand-eye calibration, you can add programming nodes in the UR robot’s interface to tell the robot to connect to the sensor, load a job on the sensor, trigger a scan, and return positional measurements in the X, Y, and Z axes.