APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR BUILDING A PALLET LOAD

• Main Authors: TURPIN, Patrice, JODOIN, Robert, LAROUCHE, Benoit, LÉGARÉ, William, SIMON, Christian, MÉTIVIER, Régis, MORENCY, Sylvain-Paul
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 17.01.2019
• Subjects: CHAMBERS PROVIDED WITH MANIPULATION DEVICES; CONVEYING; HAND TOOLS; HANDLING THIN OR FILAMENTARY MATERIAL; MANIPULATORS; PACKING; PERFORMING OPERATIONS; PNEUMATIC TUBE CONVEYORS; PORTABLE POWER-DRIVEN TOOLS; SHOP CONVEYOR SYSTEMS; STORING; TRANSPORT OR STORAGE DEVICES, e.g. CONVEYORS FOR LOADING ORTIPPING; TRANSPORTING

A pallet building apparatus for automatically building a pallet load of pallet load article units onto a pallet support including a frame defining a pallet building base, at least one articulated robot to transport and place the pallet load article units, a controller to control articulated robot motion and effect therewith a pallet load build, at least one three-dimensional, time of flight, camera to generate three-dimensional imaging of the pallet support and pallet load build, wherein the controller registers, from the three-dimensional camera, real time three-dimensional imaging data embodying different corresponding three-dimensional images of the pallet support and pallet load build, to determine, in real time, from the corresponding real time three-dimensional imaging data, a pallet support variance or article unit variance and generate in real time an articulated robot motion signal, the articulated robot motion signal being generated real time so as to be performed real time by the at least one articulated robot between placement of at least one pallet load article unit and a serially consecutive pallet load article unit enabling substantially continuous building of the pallet load build.