Robotic Picking and Placing
What is a Pick-and-Place Robot?
A pick-and-place robot is a mechatronic system used to automate the process of picking up objects and placing them onto a surface in a set position and orientation. This action is frequently used to sort or stage products in a specific array for a downstream process, such as case-packing, where fixed machinery or another robot can properly handle the products.
Types of Robots for Picking and Placing
For high speed picking, collating, part-transfer, singulation, sorting and inspection, robots range from 2kg payload capacity to 10kg with cycle-times as high as 150 cycles per minute. Our families of pick-and-place robot models includes serial-linked articulated arms with 5- or 6-degrees of freedom, delta-style parallel arms with 4 degrees of freedom, and SCARA style 4-degree of freedom arm.
Delta Robots like the Yaskawa MPP3 are parallel robots that use three arms connected to servo motors at one side and universal joints at the tool head. This design allows the tool head to remain parallel to the work area at all times and enables high-speed movement that is well-suited for picking, packing and sortation.
Articulated and delta robots can be combined with synchronized conveyor belts to perform high speed pick-and-place operations. Multiple robots, vision systems and multi-part conveyors are coordinated by a common software solution for accurate product sorting and package insertion.
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Robotic Picking and Packing
What is a Pick-Pack Robot?
A standard industrial robotic arm is outfitted with an end-effector suited to pick up the object(s) to be packed. The robot is then "taught" to pick up the objects from the conveyor or holding area and place them into the box or carton. Once taught, the robot can repeat this procedure automatically for as long as necessary. They can also be programmed to run multiple jobs to perform different packing arrays from a single station. Industrial robots are well suited for this task because the process is repetitive and can be done faster and more reliably than human workers.
Applications in secondary packaging are vast and varied including but not limited to tray packing, tray handling, case packing, case erection and handling, bottle packing, shrink-wrapping, pouch handling and packing and so on. Depending on reach, payload and speed requirements, articulated arm robots ranging from 5kg to 50kg with 4-7 degrees of freedom could be employed with equal ease.
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Flexible case packing & palletizing for Rockline Industries
Motoman integration partner CRG Technologies worked with Rockline industries to integrate a flexible case packing and palletizing system for flow-wrapped packs of baby wipes..
MLX robot control enables all programming to be handled from Rockline's existing PLC, using ladder logic - making the system more simple to program, operate and reproduce for other lines and locations.
Read the Case Study from Packaging World
Packaging Software and Vision
To aid with ease of use and faster application development Yaskawa Motoman offers suite of software technology such as MotoSight 2D and MotoSight 3D for vision integration, conveyor tracking for tracking and handling parts moving at high speed on multiple lines, and MotoPick software that combines the vision and tracking with built in part scheduling in case you application requires multiple robots synchronizing the operations for tray-packing, singulating and more.
All Software All Vision
PLC Integration Options
Singular Control
Robots, servos and drives work together seamlessly under Singular Control™ to boost throughput for three of the most critical applications. See this combined control of Yaskawa robots, servos and variable speed drives at work in our Singular Control automation demo, as dramatized by our Singular Control video.
MLX Unified Controls
The MLX family of PLC integration solutions provides an interface that enables the programming and control of Motoman industrial robots with the widely accepted Rockwell Automation Programmable Logic Controllers.