In the chemical, food, and other process industries, loading and unloading heavy material drums has long been a bottleneck for automation. Their weight, required precision, and complex handling workflow often make full automation difficult.
Today, through a real project case, we break down how 3D vision and robots work seamlessly together to achieve 0.5 mm precision in fully automated loading and unloading—offering a practical path for intelligent transformation in process manufacturing.
On a chemical production line, drums filled with solid adhesive are the key raw material. Each full drum weighs up to 50 kg, and half-filled drums must also be handled in real production.
Traditional manual handling is inefficient and poses safety risks. Meanwhile, misalignment between drums, carts, and machines makes traditional robot “blind picking” insufficient. The core challenge becomes: How can a robot “see clearly,” “locate precisely,” and carry out the fine-tube docking in subsequent steps?
Solution
To address these pain points, we deployed a robotic vision-guidance system powered by a high-precision industrial 3D camera. Mounted at the robot arm’s end, the camera acts as a freely movable “smart eye,” guiding the robot through every complex step with high accuracy.
Loading Process:
Vision Positioning:
The robot-mounted camera captures the poses of rotary stations A and B with high-precision.
Accurate Picking:
The robot moves to the loading cart, where 3D vision locates the drum for picking.
Stable Placement:
The drum is precisely placed into the material cup.
Intelligent Docking:
The vision system guides the robot to pick the female air tube connector and precisely dock it with the male connector on the drum, completing the loading process.
Unloading Process:
Automated Depalletizing:
3D Vision guides the robot to remove the female quick-connector on the drum and place it back onto the fixed male port.
Accurate Return:
The robot picks the empty drum up and through vision-based localization of the positioning block on the unloading cart, it precisely places the drum back smoothly.
The entire workflow forms a fully automated closed-loop system—no manual intervention, supporting 24/7 continuous and stable operation.
Technical Highlights
In real production, the system delivers impressive technical performance. It achieves 0.5 mm recognition and picking accuracy, ensuring precise robot positioning in every operation. Even more notable is its speed: from image capture to final analysis, the entire process is completed in about 2 seconds, with core algorithm processing taking less than 1.5 seconds. This combination of high precision and fast response ensures that production takt time remains unaffected, providing a reliable guarantee for continuous, uninterrupted operation.
Customer Value
The successfully deployed solution brings significant value across multiple dimensions:
Cost & Efficiency Gains:
Workers are fully freed from repetitive, heavy manual handling, reducing labor and safety management costs while enabling a clear increase in production efficiency.
Higher Yield & Process Stability:
The system’s 0.5 mm picking and docking precision eliminates issues such as collisions or misalignment common in manual operations, ensuring a standardized and stable production process.
Unmanned Operations:
The solution lays a solid foundation for future "lights-out" manufacturing, accelerating the customer’s transition from traditional manufacturing to intelligent, automated production.
This case demonstrates how mature 3D vision technology is becoming a key driver of industrial upgrading. By overcoming long-standing automation challenges in process industries, 3D vision makes heavy-material handling simple, precise, and reliable. As these solutions continue to be adopted across sectors, we’re witnessing the boundaries of intelligent manufacturing expanding and production efficiency reaching new heights.
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