This week on the web, I found an ingenious robotic workcell with four delta robots built completely out of Lego that can sort Lego blocks at a rate of 48 blocks per minute.According to the creator, the “system uses four Lego parallel robots which are fed by two conveyor belts. As items flow down the conveyor belt toward the robots, each item passes by a light/color sensor mounted on each conveyor. When the item is detected, a signal is sent to the robots telling them information such as the color of the object, which belt the object is on and the position of the object on the belt. The robot reaches out and grabs the item from the moving conveyor belt when each item gets close enough and moves it to a location based on the color of the item. The cell is capable of picking and placing objects at a rate of 48 items per minute. Each robot can move 12 items per minute, or it can move an item in 5 seconds.”
To learn more about the robots, visit http://tinkernology.blogspot.com/2011/04/four-lego-delta-robots.html.