Throwing of Axial-Symmetric Objects in Production Systems

The author is convinced, that throwing of objects will achieve an increasing relevance in the production systems of the future. This new technology will allow the implementation of logistic functions like transportation, commissioning and sorting for work pieces, assemblies, products, packaging and others with very high speeds and with very high flexibility. At the beginning of the talk the potential of this new technology will be discussed. Afterwards the actual state of the art for throwing of ball shaped objects will be described. In various research works camera systems were developed which are measuring the trajectories of flying balls and which are controlling robots to capture the balls. In a research project of the author throwing devices were developed, which are able to throw balls with a high accuracy directly into predefined stationary targets. Such a target can be for example the gripper of a robot. The most important challenges for this approach are the calculation of the throwing parameters to success the target and the control of accurate launching motions. The advantages of this approach are that the camera system and the tracking of the robot for capturing the balls are not required anymore. An important class for the geometric shapes of realistic objects in production systems are axial symmetric objects. For throwing such objects not only their trajectories but also their orientations must be considered during a flight. Based on the fundamentals in the fields of ballistic and flow mechanics several physical effects will be explained, which are acting especially on cylinders, during a flight. Some of them are working to destabilize and others to stabilize their orientation. Finally throws of some real axial symmetric objects, like work pieces from mechanical manufacturing systems and packaging from the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry, will be presented on videos. Different stabilization effects like shoulder stabilization, arrow stabilization and spin stabilization are keeping the direction of these objects during their flight in a determined orientation. Based on these examples for axial-symmetric objects sub classes can be defined, which are suited for throwing with good flight stability.