David Demarest

Robotic control system for a needle sorting and feeding apparatus

A control system for a needle infeed device for automatically transferring needles randomly positioned on an indexing conveyor to an engagement device for subsequent conveyance to a processing location. The needle infeed device comprises one or more robots each having a gripper means for picking and placing the needles in the engagement device. The control system comprises a control device for pausing the indexing conveyor to create a dwell cycle for the infeed device, vision tracking apparatus in communication with the control device for imaging needles at one or more predetermined locations on the indexing conveyor and for determining positional and orientation data for each recognized needle during the dwell cycle, a memory device for temporarily storing the positional and orientation data received from the vision tracking device, and, a robot control device for accessing the stored positional and orientation data corresponding to the imaged needles from the memory means and for enabling one of the robots to pick up the imaged needle in accordance with its respective positional and orientation data in order to place the needle in the engagement device.