Bin Picking

Bin picking cells pull individual parts out of a jumbled bin, one at a time, using 3D vision to figure out what's there and how to grab it. It sits at the end of a lot of foundry, forging, and warehouse lines where parts arrive in totes rather than fixtures.

Perception drives the cell. A structured-light or stereo camera builds a point cloud of the bin, software segments individual parts, ranks graspable ones, and hands the robot a target pose. Grasp planning has to account for parts overlapping, buried, or oriented in ways no engineer specifically programmed for.

Grippers are where practical bin picking lives. Combining vacuum and finger elements on one wrist lets the same cell handle a flat-face part on one pick and a bulky, uneven one on the next. A rigid two-finger gripper alone will fail on parts it can't get purchase on, and a suction-only tool can't lift porous or oily castings.

Cell layout has to leave room for the camera's field of view over the full bin and for collision-free arm entry to the bin walls. Camera occlusion by the arm itself is a common project-killer, so cells often add a fixed camera above the bin plus an in-hand camera for final approach.

Common trouble: parts jammed against bin walls that no grasp can reach without collision, grasp attempts that succeed at the pick and drop mid-transfer because the real center of mass wasn't where the vision predicted, and cycle time creep as the bin empties and grasps take longer to plan.

Compatibility limits are honest. Thin, shiny, or transparent parts confuse 3D vision.

Very small parts (below a few centimeters) push the resolution limits of most industrial 3D cameras. Bins with mixed part types are still hard, and cells are usually specified for one SKU per bin.

On the floor: the FANUC M-20iD/25 and ABB IRB 2600 are common mid-payload picks, and the Universal Robots UR10e shows up on lighter parts in a fenceless cell. Related: depalletizing, kitting, quality inspection.