Vision-Based Grasping and Manipulation of Flexible USB Wires

The USB wires are commonly used in many 3C products (Computer, Communication and Consumer electronics), such as smartphones, laptops, and tablets. The demand for manufacturing and soldering USB wires is now increasing significantly as the rapidly expanding 3C market However, because of the small size and the deformation property of USB wires, current soldering procedures are heavily dependent on manual works. There are three steps to solder the USB wires: Separating, Sorting, and Pressing. In this paper, it mainly deals with wire sorting and pressing tasks after the wire separation. Vision feedback is applied to the sorting task and it also assesses the status of completion. The developed grasping and manipulation algorithm have the advantage of highly autonomous capability, in sense that no human assistance or supervision is required throughout the procedure. Moreover, it has a certain level of intelligence, the actual operation sequence is not completely fixed, it is based on the principle of the minimum distance between the position of the grasping point and the position of soldering groove, which will improve the overall efficiency.