Robot Piece Picking Advances with Artificial Intelligence

By David Greenfield Editor-in-Chief

Artificial intelligence applications have been growing rapidly in a variety of industrial technologies, ranging from data analytics and quality inspections to autonomous mobile robots. Now the technology is being applied to robotic grasping applications to enable accurate picking and placing of random objects in unstructured and changing environments.

Siemens says it is working to “democratize artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled robotics by encapsulating systems for complex problems in easy-to-use software.” To this end, the company is developing an as-yet-to-be-named software technology designed for use by system integrators and OEMs to create cost-effective, advanced AI-driven piece-picking systems that can “reliably pick and place objects that are unknown to the system at runtime.”

Differentiating factors

Traditional automated pick-and-place systems follow fixed, pre-programmed routines in a structured environment. Applying AI enables robotics to perform generic tasks in unstructured and dynamically changing environments.