b'\x1b\x1a\x19 \x1f\x18\x1d\x17\x16Machine TechnologyROBOT ROLLOUTBy William Leventon necessarily need light curtains orset of grippers, (the system) can something of that sort. It can sensechange out the gripper from the ve-A s part of a move into automa- pedestrians and stop and let themhicle itself, Marrinan said. So in-tion, a company widely knownpass. stead of just picking up a pallet or for making tool grinding machinesThe system pairs the AGV with antray of tools, it can also pick up an is offering a pair of innovative ro- Omron TM arm that can use specificindividual tool and put it in a mea-botic systems from two Japan-basedgripping systems for different han- suring device.firms. dling applications. As for Nextage, Rollomatic de- Rollomatic Inc. in Mundelein, Il- Because it can carry anotherscribes it as a new kind of industrial linois, a subsidiary of Swiss manu-facturer Rollomatic SA, is selling an automated handling system from Omron and an industrial humanoid robot from Kawada Robotics Corp.Besides alleviating labor shortageRollomatic is providing Omrons problems, the systems help min- SmartMoMa handling system imize the burden of tasks that canto customers interested in be automated and free up mindsautomation.to handle the sort of tasks that only humans can complete at this time, said Cole Marrinan, applications en-gineer at Rollomatic Inc.Known as SmartMoMa, the Omron system consists of an automatically guided vehicle, or AGV, and an in-telligent six-axis robotic arm. Capa-ble of maneuvering autonomously in a production environment, the sys-tem can load and unload parts with-out human intervention. The system also allows automatic movement of tool cassettes between different grinding machines, as well as even-tual transportation to post-grinding stations for tasks, such as measuring, laser marking, cleaning, packaging and labeling. RollomaticAs it moves around on a shop floor, the AGV doesnt need fenc-ing, magnetic strips or anything else to guide it along a set path, Marri-nan said. It can roam from one sta-tion to another on a path that you create, but also interact with moving objects on that path. So you dont 8SEPTEMBER 2023 MachineTech.indd 8 8/15/23 12:34 PM'