Assembly and Cable Connector Guidance
Machine vision systems guide EV battery modules and cable connectors during pack system assembly
Related Products
3D laser displacement sensor with PC-based development environment
Easy to use, industrial-grade smart cameras with advanced machine vision technology.
EV battery modules are fastened into an EV battery pack with connectors and fasteners before being air-cooled. This occurs during the palletizing or stacking stage, where a robot picks and stacks batteries into a clear tray and then drops a cover on top to connect and charge them. Because fiducials serve as the critical reference position, manufacturers need to be able to extract and locate them accurately and repeatedly. This type of pick-and-place application requires vision-guided robotics and extremely accurate pattern-matching. In different markets, this application is performed either with smart cameras or with PC-based vision software.
Module to Pack Guidance
Cognex In-Sight vision systems reliably guide and align battery modules onto the EV battery pack system housing by identifying fiducial “flags” which appear as notches to the camera. The application’s success rests on the calibration of the fiducials into coordinates, which allow the system to fixture the part. An In-Sight 8000 vision system mounted to a robot acquires an image of each corner and its three alignment holes to calculate the battery module’s position. Cognex PatMax technology uses geometric information to locate and calibrate fiducial marks. PatMax is fast, robust, and highly accurate under a variety of conditions so that it is able to achieve precision alignment. The system uses these coordinates to guide the robot to pick up the bottom case. Then, a pick-and-place robot transfers it to another part of the facility.
Cable Connector 3D Guidance
3D vision tools are required to find the center of connectors or receptacles on the pack system housing, estimate the plane, and then calculate x, y, and z dimensions. A 3D laser displacement sensor guides the robot to plug in the power cable by providing its 3D position at the test station.
