VisionPro from Cognex tackles bottle alignment

VisionPro makes a famous Dutch blonde even more attractive...

Cognex Corporation: The Grolsch brewery in the Netherlands, one of the largest Dutch breweries, relies on the expertise of two German companies who built them a machine with one simple goal - to sell more beer! The machine in question is not a mere beverage dispenser but a system relying on VisionPro from Cognex which uses special grippers to rotate and align the bottles so that they are in the best position with optimum visibility. Tradition, innovation and business thinking are all combined into a beverage machine which promotes sales.

Improving presentation at the point of sale
As one of the leading companies in the brewery industry, Grolsche Bierbrouwerij Nederland B.V. does not only concentrate on optimising its logos, labels and other advertising media. The company thought about how it could improve the presentation of its product at the point of sale. As a result, Grolsch rotates the bottles which are visible through the opening in the crate so that their labels point symmetrically towards the outside, thus allowing them to project the optimal image to the beer connoisseur in the supermarket. Bottles are rotated rapidly at a rate of 400 per minute with the end goal of influencing the customer. It’s subtle but the effect is clear - customers pick up a crate of Grolsch beer more often than they would have otherwise.

The challenge - ensure a premium beer is in a premium position
The experts who make sure that the Grolsch swing-top bottles are in the correct position before they start their journey to the customer come from a company which has specialised in sophisticated beverage and packaging machine solutions for over 35 years: the German company RICO-Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. RICO was supported in designing the system by fellow Germans aku.automation GmbH, a member of the Cognex partner integrator network, who specialise in ensuring that machines are in harmony with their production environment: The two companies developed a pioneering solution which combines the latest automation technology with intelligent vision technology and the software solutions of Cognex to accurately move the Grolsch bottles into the desired position.

Lights, camera, action!
The system operates with two parallel conveyor belts transporting up to 3000 crates per hour through the bottle alignment machine, with each crate holding 16 swing-top bottles. However, only the eight bottles in each crate with labels that are visible through the side opening have to be rotated. 10 crates are processed per cycle. Two industrial cameras are positioned approximately 1.5 metres above the conveyor belts with each camera monitoring the five crates on its respective belt. The two cameras are intelligently embedded into homogenous area lighting units, which provide optimal illumination without casting undesirable shadows.

VisionPro from Cognex tackles bottle alignment
Two factors make it easy for the machine to identify the position of the total number of 80 bottles. Firstly, the swing-top cap with Grolsch logo - the alignment of the cap is used to ensure that the bottle labels are always applied at the same position ahead of the rotation process. Secondly, VisionPro, the PC vision platform from Cognex is well suited to the bottle alignment machine because it was specially designed for multi-camera applications with low cycle rates and large numbers of evaluation targets. To date, the VisionPro tool library has proven its capabilities in over 400,000 systems worldwide.

24,000 bottles rotated per hour in a tough environment
After the object localisation step, the bottles are then aligned. Special pneumatic grippers from RICO for swing-top caps grip the bottles and lift them up slightly. Small servo motors then convert the previously identified values into the target positions. They rotate the bottles to the correct position based on a rotation angle in degrees which is individually determined for each bottle. This is an enormous job considering that 24,000 bottles have to be rotated every hour. In addition, all of this takes place in an area where the technology is permanently at risk from one of the substances it tolerates the least - water!

Meeting factory floor needs
aku.automation was actively involved in the project right from the system planning phase, which put the company in a position to develop a reliable and robust inspection system. The experience of this specialist in object-oriented checking has been combined with RICO's comprehensive knowledge about the special requirements of the beverage industry to produce solutions which are more than capable of meeting the practical requirements of the industry. For example, both the illumination systems and the cameras are accommodated in very sturdy, watertight stainless steel housings. This was necessary because although these components are installed above the production line and do not come into direct contact with the beverage already inside the bottle, the experts from RICO know that cleaning operations in beverage production plants always involve plenty of water spray and that cleaning staff cannot be expected to avoid sensitive components.

A great deal of experience, tradition and specialist knowledge have been combined with the latest technology and innovative vision software to produce a system which shows the Grolsch brand and the companies involved in the best light imaginable - a true marketing machine!

About Cognex
Cognex Corporation designs, develops, manufactures, and markets machine vision sensors and systems, or devices that can "see." Cognex vision sensors are used in factories around the world to automate the manufacture of a wide range of items and to assure their quality. Cognex is the world's leader in the machine vision industry, having shipped more than 450,000 machine vision systems, representing over $2,5 billion in cumulative revenue, since the company's founding in 1981. In addition to its corporate headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, Cognex also has regional offices and distributors located throughout North America, Japan, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Visit Cognex on-line at http://www.cognex.com.