Posted to News on 5th Jan 2010, 11:35
Easy way to integrate vision and measurement with robots
National Instruments and Denso Robotics have announced a collaboration to integrate NI measurement and vision technology with Denso robots. This collaboration is said to increase productivity and performance in automated test, research and flexible manufacturing applications. With a trend toward high-mix, low-volume manufacturing, there are pressures to reduce costs and shorten development times. A new LabVIEW library of graphical functions makes it possible for engineers and scientists to address both concerns by integrating all aspects of a robotics system within a single NI LabVIEW application without the need for complex robotic programming expertise.
Toyohiko Ito, Director at Denso Wave, a Denso group company that develops and manufactures industrial robots, states: "LabVIEW is a preferred application development environment for many of the world's engineers and scientists. Encouraging customers to use LabVIEW to control Denso robots will help increase their efficiency and reduce their time to market."
The new ImagingLab Robotics Library for Denso, from NI Alliance Partner ImagingLab, communicates directly with Denso controllers to command and control Denso robotic arms through LabVIEW software. The new library is an easy-to-use collection of graphical functions that provide the ability to use a single software environment to control and integrate every aspect of a machine, ranging from part handling and robot control to advanced measurements and machine vision. Due to the ease of use of LabVIEW, engineers who normally would not use industrial robotics can now integrate them into their applications to automate laboratories, precisely assemble components and test complex parts.
Application example
"We used LabVIEW to integrate a Denso VS-6577 robot with spectral analysers into a fully automated analytical test station without the need to learn another robotics programming language," says Dylan Jones, Principal Scientist at Genzyme. "The ImagingLab Robotics Library for Denso was an off-the-shelf solution for integrating the robotic arm. Conservatively, we estimate that with this test station we will achieve a tenfold increase in analytical throughput."
The ImagingLab Robotics Library for Denso works with LabVIEW Real-Time systems, which combines LabVIEW graphical programming with the power of a real-time operating system, enabling users to build real-time applications. The library also works with NI Smart Cameras for integrated vision-guided robotics and NI data acquisition hardware for the measurement of both simple and highly sophisticated applications.
Follow the link to learn more about NI tools for industrial robotics applications or use the form on this page to request a callback or more information.
National Instruments Corporation (UK) Ltd
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UNITED KINGDOM
+44 (0)1635 523545
