A partnership between Universal Robotics, Inc. and Motoman, Inc. will yield an accurate, cost effective and easy-to-implement 3D vision system solution for a variety of robotic applications. The idea is to integrate Universal's Spatial Vision self-calibrating 3D vision software in Motoman's industrial robots. It is hoped that the resulting solutions will be introduced to the materials handling market in early 2010.

Roger Christian, Vice President Marketing and International Groups at Motoman is excited at the prospect of the partnership. "The Spatial Vision software is an exciting breakthrough by Universal that will allow us to set a new price-performance point in the robotic 3D vision systems market. From 3D bin picking to racking, these robots will allow our customers to enhance their operations and save valuable time and resources."

According to a Universal, Spatial Vision is designed to enable automatic self-calibration with full color and high definition images with millimeter accuracy within a robot's work envelope at a fraction of the cost of current systems.

The Spatial Vision system can automatically identify any dynamic point in 3D space and calculate the distance to this point using inexpensive web cams. It delivers accurate, full-frame color results at 960 by 720 pixels four to five times per second.