# Improving Robotic Bin-Picking Performances through Human-Robot Collaboration
## 5 Improving a Bin-Picking Workcell through Human-Robot Collaboration
### Collaborative Bin-Picking Robotic Workcell  
The collaborative bin-picking robotic workcell exploited during the experimental tests is depicted in Figure 2: it is composed of a robot arm and a 3D vision sensor. The robot arm is a 6-axis Fanuc CR-15 iA collaborative robot, which has a payload of 15 kg, a reach of 1441 mm and its controller is the R-30 iB Plus Fanuc controller. This robot has an increasingly common feature: it can either work in collaborative mode (TCP speed under 250 mm/s and impedance control active) or standard mode (maximum TCP speed 800 mm/s and robot inside safety fences). During the experimental tests, the robot was always used in a collaborative mode. Collaborative robots are sometimes equipped with torque sensors in every joint which, together with an accurate dynamic model of the robot, enable detecting contacts and estimating contact forces along the entire robot structure. The tested robot is equipped with a single force sensor incorporated into its base that enables collaborative functions, i.e., can detect and estimate contacts along the structure. The robot arm also presents two LEDs (white and red) and a button.  
On the robot flange, a force sensor and a collaborative electric gripper are fitted. The force sensor is an FS-15 iA Fanuc force sensor: it detects collisions with items and avoids damaging objects when picking or placing them. The gripper is a Schunk Co-act EGP-C electric 2-finger parallel gripper certified for collaborative operation with an integrated LED strip light (which can assume three different colors: yellow, green, and red).  
The 3D vision sensor is a Fanuc 3 DA structured light sensor, and it is placed on a fixed camera stand. As can be seen in Figure 2, the vision sensor is composed of a projector unit and two camera units. The 3D Area Sensor obtains 3D information in the field of view by using the two camera units to capture multiple stripe pattern images as projected by the projector unit.  
Fanuc provides its own computer vision system (iRVision) as an option that can be installed and integrated directly into the robot controller, which performs image acquisition and processing. The use of iRVision system enables the user to plug in a camera directly without any additional third-party hardware and software for image processing. This minimizes the time and number of activities performed during the implementation phase and eliminates the need to configure a communication between the robot controller and an external vision sensor. The iRVision system also provides its own computer vision algorithms (which Fanuc calls tools) for part recognition and localization, eliminating the need to develop complex image processing algorithms. However, this can also be a limitation as users cannot implement personalized computer vision algorithms. The robot controller is connected to a PC through an Ethernet network: on the PC, the setup of vision processes can be carried out by exploiting one or more predefined iRVision tools.  
Alternatively, the configuration of vision processes can also be performed directly using the robot teaching pendant.