engineering

Omron Adept

Omron Adept is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Omron Adept rather than just read about it. In short: Omron Adept Technology, Inc. is a multinational corporation with headquarters in Pleasanton, California. The company focus on industrial automation and robotics, including software and vision guidance.

Key takeaways

Omron Adept belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Omron Adept to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Omron Adept from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Omron Adept Technology, Inc. is a multinational corporation with headquarters in Pleasanton, California. The company focus on industrial automation and robotics, including software and vision guidance. Adept has offices throughout the United States as well as in Dortmund, Germany, Paris, France, and Singapore. Adept was acquired by Omron in October 2015.

Company history Founded in 1983, Adept was originally the West Coast Division of Unimation, which later became part of Westinghouse after being a division of Consolidated Diesel Electronic (Condec). However, its roots trace back nearly ten years earlier when founders Bruce Shimano and Brian Carlisle, both Stanford graduate students, collaborated with Victor Scheinman at Stanford's AI lab. In 2000, Adept Technology acquired Pensar Tucson Inc. In 2015, Omron acquired Adept Technology. Today, the company is active in a variety of industries requiring high speed, precision part handling including food handling, consumer product and electronics, packaging, medical and lab automation, automotive, as well as emerging markets like solar manufacturing.

Robots

In 1984, the company introduced its first product, the AdeptOne SCARA robot. Around 2004, Adept introduced table-top SCARA robots called the Adept Cobra i600/i800, with the system and servo controls, and the power amplifiers, embedded in the base of the robot. The related Adept Cobra s600/s800 models employ an external controller (with the servo controls and amplifiers still in the robot base) to achieve greater system functionality. These robots are claimed to be the fastest robots in their class. In 2006, Adept released its new delta-4 robot, the Adept Quattro. It is based on a new concept (invented by French and Spanish researchers and described in the European patent EP 1 870 214 B1 [1]) of delta-style robot mechanism that has four arms versus the traditional three-arm design. The rotation is achieved through a parallel platform. In 2010, Adept purchased MobileRobots Inc, maker of autonomous platforms and guidance software for research and industrial applications. After purchase by Omron, these intelligent vehicles became the Omron Adept LD series. Adept also offers Adept Python linear-module robots with one to four axes in various configurations, and six-axis Adept Viper articulated robots. In 2014, Adept partnered with ROEQ and released the Adept Lynx LD autonomous mobile robot, calling it the "cart transporter".

Vision software Scott Roth of the West Coast Division of Unimation implemented an interface to the Machine Intelligence Corporation (MIC) vision system VS-100 in early 1981. It was a binary system using blob (connectivity) analysis. Unimation's first vision system was called Univision I for PUMA robots. When the West Coast Division of Unimation split off to become Adept Technology, Scott continued to develop the robot vision system under an agreement whereby Adept agreed to grant back software enhancements to Unimation over a period of 2 years. This agreement also applied to VAL, the robot programming language then used for the PUMA robots. Adept called the vision system AdeptVision. Scott was joined by Fred Andresen in 1984, who wrote some vision tools and AIM VisionWare, the GUI. AdeptVision is probably the first commercially available robot vision system that achieved sales in the thousands of units. AdeptVision included many vision-related operations for image capture, enhancement, and analysis. It provided machine guidance with robot-vision calibration and supported online gauging and assembly verification. Provided functionality included rulers (line and arc), windows (rectangular, round, annulus, and pie-shaped regions of interest), feature finders (line and arc fitters), normalized grayscale correlation, blob analysis, processing tools (gradient or Sobel edge detection, thresholding, morphology, image subtraction, histogram, frame copy, pan & zoom, and convolutions), and feature-based recognition. The rotation and scale invariant ObjectFinder was patented. The “ruler” created by Fred Andresen is an important metrology tool that locates edges along a line or arc with sub-pixel accuracy. The linear version operates in any orientation and is the basis of the line and arc fitters, providing high accuracy in grayscale images. AdeptVision systems ranged from binary linescan for conveyor belts to binary and grayscale 2-D images. The system controllers evolved from the Q-bus to the Multibus to the VME bus. The first system consisted of the DEC LSI-11/23 CPU, EG&G Reticon line camera, camera interface board that included a run-length processor, a Peritek display processor board (512 x 512 x 1 bitmap), and a B&W display/terminal. The various versions of the vision systems over time included AdeptVision I [256 x 241 x 1-bit binary], AdeptVision II [375 x 483 x 1-bit binary], AdeptVision ML [256 x 1-bit for moving line], -XGS [509 x 481 x 7-bit grayscale], -XGS II [509 x 481 x 7-bit grayscale], -AGS [512 x 484 x 8-bit grayscale], -AGS II, -AGS-GV [512 x 484 x 8-bit grayscale], -VME [640 x 480 or 1024 x 1024 x 7-bit grayscale], and -VXL. The AdeptVision XGS and AGS systems were particularly popular in Adept's early history, with 1000 AdeptVision AGS systems alone having been shipped as of January 25, 1993.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Omron Adept

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Omron Adept claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Omron Adept before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Omron Adept ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Omron Adept

In research: Omron Adept appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Omron Adept in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Omron Adept is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1983 establishments in California, 2015 mergers and acquisitions, American subsidiaries of foreign companies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Omron Adept outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Omron Adept in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Omron Adept means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Omron Adept out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Omron Adept in simple terms?

Why does Omron Adept matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Omron Adept?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Omron Adept.