As vision-based flexible parts feeders continue to make in-roads into the manufacturing arena, a unified methodology and architecture for their programming becomes increasingly important. This thesis examines an object-oriented software architecture for programming flexible parts feeding systems. The architecture is vertically segregated into levels of responsibility. High-level software objects oversee system start-up, general system operation, and shutdown. Mid-level objects are used to perform functions associated with sub-systems of the feeder: part presentation, part location, part retrieval, and parameter auto-adjustment. Server-level objects are responsible for encapsulating specific hardware. Complementing this vertical segregation, as one descends the hierarchy, is a progressively tightening alignment of software objects with physical hardware.
A new high-speed parts feeder has been constructed and serves as the testbed for the development of the software. It utilizes a series of conveyors for part presentation, a PC-based vision system for part location, and an Adept robot for part retrieval.
I'm not particularly fond of CWRU's standard thesis format, so I re-formatted the document to appear more like a technical book. Specifically, I used O'Reilly's Learning Perl, 2nd Ed. as a basis for this format. The page size is defined as standard letter (8.5 x 11) in the ps file, however, after duplex printing it may be trimmed to the intended dimensions of 7 x 9 3/16.