Pallet Handling Robot

In the midst of a pandemic, many businesses have been forced to reevaluate their production and supply chain operations. This is especially true of those that depend on labor-intensive tasks like assembly, picking, packaging, palletizing and machine tending. Rather than hiring and retaining a workforce for these physically-demanding applications, companies have turned to material handling robots for a variety of benefits including increased productivity and reduced costs.

One of the most basic and commonly used material handling robot application is part transfer, or moving parts from one location to another. When coupled with the right end of arm tool, a material handling robot can quickly and accurately move products to where they need to be.

Another common material handling robot application is packing, which essentially moves finished goods into shipping containers. In this application, robots can be programmed to do what a human would otherwise do by linking the robot controller to a laptop or desktop computer (or internal/Internet) network.

Finally, sorting is a common material handling robot application that involves classifying different elements in an order or sequence. This can be done by integrating the robot system with vision and/or identification systems that enable the robot to read and interpret labels, barcodes or other marks.

When using a robotic system for material handling it is important to keep in mind that repeatability changes with speed and payload. This is because the position of a robot axis during a motion is affected by what is called “compliance.” Compliance is caused by the relative movement between the robot arm and its base, and may be responsible for overshoot during high speed and/or heavy payload operations.