Virtual Bin Picking - a generic framework to overcome the Bin Picking complexity by the use of a virtual environment

Bin Picking is a very popular topic in the scope of robotic applications. For many years, R&D facilities as well as the industry work on Bin Picking solutions. However, it is challenging to bring such systems into industrial shop floors mainly due to the design and economical calculability accompanied by the acceptance of stable Bin Picking systems without any downtime. This paper presents a versatile interface-based framework for the planning, designing and in particular for the simulation of various Bin Picking applications. For that, the term ‘Virtual Bin Picking’ has been introduced, which associates the simulation of Bin Picking scenarios in a virtual environment without the need for hardware components. Thus, it enables the design of Bin Picking work cells and it allows to predict the quality of such cells in an early virtual commissioning stage.