Apparatus for determining angular deviation of an article
AssigneePolaroid Corporation
InventorRichard G. Egan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An apparatus is provided for determining the angular deviation of a randomly angular oriented article from a desired angular orientation in preparation for its engagement by a robotic part handling device. The apparatus projects a rotating image of the article onto a mask which is representative of the article in a desired orientation and provides an angular deviation signal indicative of the cummulative angular displacement of the image from an initial reference position at which the image matches the mask.
Claims16
Apparatus for determining the angular deviation with respect to a reference axis of a randomly angularly oriented article in a given plane from a desired angular orientation, said apparatus comprising:
- means for supporting such a randomly angularly oriented article in the given plane;
- optical means for forming an image of the supported article at an image plane, said optical means having an optical axis and being mounted for rotation thereabout through a given angular displacement from a given reference location to effect a 360.degree. rotation of said image from an initial position;
- means for rotatably driving said optical means through said given angular displacement;
- means responsive to rotation of said optical means for providing displacement signals indicative of the progressive cummulative change in angular displacement of said image from its said initial position;
- means, including a reference pattern located in said image plane and onto which said rotating image is projected, for providing a signal indicative of when during the course of image rotation said rotating image is in the desired orientation, said pattern being representative of the article in its desired angular orientation;
- and
- means responsive to said displacement signals and said desired orientation signal for providing an angular deviation signal indicative of the cumulative angular displacement of said image from its said initial position at the occurrence of said desired orientation signal.
Apparatus for viewing an article presented in a given plane such that it has a random angular orientation with respect to a reference axis, and for determining the angular deviation of the randomly angularly oriented article from a desired angular orientation, said apparatus comprising;
- means for supporting such a randomly angularly oriented article in the given plane;
- optical means for forming an image of the supported article at an image plane, said optical means having an optical axis and being mounted for rotation thereabout through a given angular displacement from a reference location to effect a 360.degree. rotation of said image from an initial position;
- means for rotatably driving said optical means through said given angular displacement;
- means responsive to rotation of said optical means for providing displacement signals indicative of the progressive cumulative change in angular displacement of said image from its said initial position;
- a reference pattern representative of the article in its desired angular orientation located at said image plane and onto which image bearing light is projected by said optical means for modulating the amount of light transmitted through said pattern in accordance with the angular orientation of said rotating image, said pattern being configured for transmitting a minimum amount of light therethrough when the angular orientation of said rotating image coincides with the desired angular orientation;
- means for detecting said light transmitted through said pattern during image rotation and for providing light level signals indicative of the amount of said transmitted light;
- and
- means for processing said displacement signals and said light level signals to provide an angular deviation signal indicative of the cumulative angular displacement of said image from its said initial position at the occurrence of a light level signal indicative of a minimum amount of light transmitted through said pattern.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.