SMARTHANDLE partners had the opportunity to visit Menicon premises at Emmen, Netherlands!
👷♀️During the visit, partners were presented the challenges regarding the contact lenses manipulation along the manufacturing process. These challenges are related to the lenses material, which is flexible, light, transparent and delicate to scratches and to hygienic.
👁 So far, it was not possible to perform correctly the delicate manipulation of contact lenses with a proper automated solution. Therefore, the manipulation is done manually by workers at each single production stage, despite all the ergonomic and productivity problems related to that.
🤝 To tackle these issues, SMARTHANDLE will develop an automated system, able to manipulate the lenses correctly, and at any of the production stages. The use of a collaborative robot equipped with suitable vision sensors able to locate and identify the lenses, will be the most suitable solution. Structured-light 3D cameras will be used to solve the vision issues.
#horizoneurope #manufacturing #dexterous #robots