Optimized Control Methods for Capturing Flying Objects with a Cartesian Robot

Throwing or shooting is a new approach for the transportation of objects within production systems. Since gantry robots are often applied to load and unload machines, in a research project a Cartesian robot was used for capturing flying objects. A camera system is measuring the object's positions during a throw in subsequent periods of time. Based on these measurements it can predict the capturing point with an increasing accuracy. So it can direct the robot during a throw to the capturing point also with an increasing accuracy. In this paper control methods are proposed which allow in such an application fast and smooth motions of the robot to the final capturing point. For the evaluation of the control methods two scenarios, a simplified and a realistic one, are defined.