Folding cartons with fixtures: A motion planning approach

Packaging products such as telephones and two-way radios after assembly is a common manufacturing task, Carton folding is a packaging operation typica lly performed by human operators or with fixed automation. We present a fle xible method to fold cardboard cartons using fixtures; a carton blank is fo lded by moving it through a fixture with a robot. This method uses intercha ngeable fixtures to enable rapid changeovers between product models. We out line an approach to design a fixture given a carton and a folding sequence. We present an implemented motion planning algorithm that generates all fol ding sequences for a carton by modeling it kinematically as a many degree-o f-freedom robot manipulator with revolute joints and branching links. Foldi ng fixtures constrain the carton motion to paths consisting of line segment s in its configuration space. me characterize the set of valid paths for th ese carton robots and generate them using the motion planner. To illustrate the method, we selected a folding sequence for an example carton, designed a fixture, and demonstrated folding of the carton from blanks with an indu strial robot.