Need advice on how to best handle paper and card

Let's Make Robots Beginners
1

Hi, Newbie to the board. I am looking for some advice on the equipment I need to initiate a project. Project involves

  1. Picking up a piece of paper or card from a pile - probably with suction (size of paper card about postcard size up to A4)
  2. Moving the paper/card under a camera
  3. Photographing
  4. Turning the paper/card over somehow
  5. Photographing the back
  6. moving the paper/card onto a ‘done’ pile

I also want to have another stack of plain A4 paper with sequential numbers on each sheet. Then the system would

  1. Read the sequential number on the top sheet of A4 paper (used to rename photos taken)
  2. Place the A4 paper on top of the paper/card

So I would end up with a stack of processed papers/cards with a numbered sheet of A4 paper between them and a pair of images (front and back with matching number

I was looking at the Uarms for moving paper onto a conveyor belt. How to turn the paper over has me stumped.

any ideas would be much appreciated.

James

2

@dance621 Welcome to the RobotShop Community.

  1. A robotic arm can do this, though you’ll need something with sufficient suction.
  2. Having the camera face up and placing the card over it should be easy
  3. Automatically photographing? What type of camera are you using?
  4. This can be done with a separate 1+1 degree of freedom “micro arm”.
  5. Same Q as 3 above.
  6. Done
  7. Reading and understanding a number on a sheet requires a vision system and quite a bit of programming
  8. Done

The motion part is relatively easy. For example:


If you need multiple suction cups, you can experiment with using an air pump, multiple tubes and an RC relay to activate it. You’ll need to create custom mechanics.


You would reuse the gripper and gripper servo for number 4 above, though you’ll need one extra servo for rotating it. If there’s not much space, you’ll likely have to raise, rotate and lower, so a pan/tilt might be best:

The arm would move the card to within the jaws of the gripper -> The gripper would clamp down on the card, and the arm would release it -> The pan/tilt would rotate the card upward (for space) and 180 degrees -> Place it back in a position where the suction cup of the arm can pick it up again.

If you’re new to robotics, your main issue will be programming the motions, and number 7 above.

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