Robots Get Smarter With RFID

Filed in archive Implementation on October 10, 2006

The confidence in RFID seems to be on the rise. Wittmann, a company into plastics is utilizing RFID in its robots in order to make them sharper. A system is being used by the company which uses RFID tags and readers for identification of the kind of mechanical hand attached to a robot's arm which enables it to decide the right sequence it must perform for making plastic parts.

Passive EPCglobal Gen 1 Class 1 RFID tags have been added to company's End-of-Arm Tooling or EOAT consisting of a mechanical gripper which is attached to a manufacturing robot's arm and acting as a hand for picking up molds which are injected with plastic and cooled for forming a part. The hardened plastic parts are then removed from molds and put onto the conveyor and back into the production line. RFID is being utilized for the purpose of taking off the load from the operator or for cross checking that the right program has been loaded.

I believe that implementation like these would further strengthen the confidence in this technology and keep the people away from making statements against the technology without any solid reason.