All Posts

A bin picking system is not a single product. It is a coordinated set of components, camera, vision software, path planner, robot arm, and end-of-arm tool, that work together to locate and retrieve parts from unstructured bins automatically. Get any one of those components wrong and the whole system underperforms or fails entirely. That is the most important thing to understand before speccing a bin picking cell: the challenge is system integration, not individual component p

Bin picking is one of the oldest unsolved problems in industrial robotics. The challenge is deceptively simple to describe: reach into a bin of randomly oriented parts and pick one out cleanly. A human does it without thinking. A robot, until relatively recently, could not do it at all without every part being pre-sorted and presented in a fixed orientation. That changed with 3D machine vision. Today, a bin picking robot equipped with a 3D camera and intelligent grasp plannin

The word "cobot" is short for collaborative robot, a robot arm designed to work alongside people rather than behind a safety cage. Industrial cobots take that core idea and apply it to the demanding requirements of production environments: consistent cycle times, reliable repeatability, integration with PLCs and vision systems, and the durability to run 24 hours a day across multiple shifts. The distinction between a cobot and a traditional industrial robot matters more than

A factory automation system is exactly what the name suggests: a coordinated set of machines, sensors, controllers, and software that runs manufacturing processes automatically, without requiring a human to intervene at every step. Most manufacturers already use some level of automation. Conveyors, PLCs, and fixed machinery have been part of factory floors for decades. What has changed is the accessibility and flexibility of the technology. Robot arms that once cost $150,000

If you have ever tried to connect a robot arm to a PLC and watched an integration project stall over communication setup, you have probably encountered EtherNet/IP. It is one of the most widely used industrial protocols in North American manufacturing, the default fieldbus for Allen-Bradley and Rockwell Automation environments, and a standard that any serious automation deployment eventually needs to understand. This post explains what EtherNet/IP is, how it differs from stan