Geometry and Part Feeding

Many automated manufacturing processes require parts to be oriented prior to assembly. A part feeder takes in a stream of identical parts in arbitrary orientations and outputs them in uniform orientation. We consider part feeders that do not use sensing information to accomplish the task of orienting a part; these feeders include vibratory bowls, parallel jaw grippers, and conveyor belts and tilted plates with so-called fences. The input of the problem of sensorless manipulation is a description of the part shape and the output is a sequence of actions that moves the part from its unknown initial pose into a unique final pose. For each part feeder we consider, we determine classes of orientable parts, give algorithms for synthesizing sequences of actions, and derive upper bounds on the length of these sequences.