Canon enters European 3D machine vision market

A system capable of the three-dimensional recognition of the shapes of the parts is required to enable a robotic arm to accurately and successively recognise and pick up individual items from a randomly-assembled pile of parts.

The new Canon RV300 and RV500 systems expand a product line-up already featuring the Canon RV1100, originally launched in Japan in April 2014.  The Canon systems feature a 3D machine vision head, which encompasses the system sensor and 3D machine vision recognition software, responsible for recognition processing.

The high-speed, high-accuracy three-dimensional object recognition capabilities of the new machine vision system were made possible by applying innovative image-recognition and information-processing technologies, cultivated through Canon’s research and development of cameras and business machines.

Canon’s 3D Machine Vision systems can accurately recognise a diverse range of objects, including parts with curved features, parts with few distinguishing characteristics, and intricately structured parts. The new Canon RV300 and RV500 systems join the Canon RV1100, originally launched in Japan.

Contributing to improved production line efficiency, both the RV300 and RV500 deliver high-speed performance, taking only approximately 1.8 seconds to recognise randomly arranged small-scale parts in 3D and send this data to a robotic controller unit attached to the robotic arm.

The new systems feature high-performance 3D recognition with a high level of accuracy, the RV300 and RV500 achieve exceedingly small error tolerances of less than 0.1mm and 0.15mm respectively.

Users can easily register data for parts to be picked up by inputting CAD data and by capturing images of the parts randomly assembled in a pile. The 3D machine vision systems can use computer-generated images to automatically learn how to visually identify the parts. Since no complicated programming is necessary, users can easily re-register parts in accordance with changes in type and shape of parts to be supplied in production.
 
The Canon RV300 and RV500 and RV1100 systems will go on sale in Europe in August 2015.