Using Partial Sensor Information to Orient Parts

Parts orienting, the process of bringing parts in initially unknown orientations to a goal orientation, is an important aspect of automated assembly. The most common industrial orienting systems are vibratory bowl feeders, which use the shape and mass properties of parts to orient them. Bowl feeders rely on a sequence of mechanical operations and typically do not use sensors. In this paper, we describe the use of partial information sensors along with a sequence of pushing operations to eliminate uncertainty in the orientations of parts. We characterize the shorter execution lengths of sensor-based plans and show that sensor-based plans are more powerful than sensorless plans in that they can bring a larger class of parts to distinct