The world’s first packaging robot was a four-axis model developed and constructed by Gerhard Schubert at the end of the seventies. Unveiled for the first time at Interpack 1981 sporting the name Roby, the unit attracted excited interest in the industry. Today, it goes by the type designation TLM-F4 robot unit. Equipped with a carbon fibre arm, it is capable of achieving acceleration levels of 10 G and speeds of 5 metres per second. And as you would expect of a robot, it does all this with practically no noise. The F4 unit, also known as a picker, generally comes exclusively in the form of a double pack regulated by a control system - a double F4 or F44 picker station. While in former times the unit’s zero point had to be laboriously reset with every change of motor, this now takes place fully automatically.

The vision system

Our vision system is used in conjunction with the TLM-F44 robot unit. The vision system is capable of processing around 4000 products per minute with the aid of an incident or transmitted light scanner. The incident light scanner is a colour scanner which supplies a three-dimensional picture. The packaging machine operator can specify certain quality characteristics for the image processing system to take into consideration, so ensuring that only flawless products are ever picked off the infeed conveyor. As well as the precise position and rotational angle of the products, the surface dimensions and contour data are compared to the specified values and transmitted to the robots.