MSC Software Corporation

Packaging plays a particularly important role in the high-quality confectionary market where producers produce elaborate cartons with complicated folding procedures that can be compared to origami. Most of these packages are not secured by glue, but rather with complicated tuck-in operations, requiring that the carton be constructed with flaps and slots that mate to each other during the folding operation. Complex packages are traditionally built by human operators, because of the difficulty in developing automated machinery that can manage the complicated folding operations and also be readily adapted to new packaging styles as they are developed.

“The physical finger displacements correlate very well with the actual robot displacements,” said Ferdinando Cannella, Head of IIT’s Advanced Industrial Automation Lab of Advanced Robotic Department. “The carton folding sequence of the folding model also matched up perfectly to the actual robot.

• Up to 80% time savings using Adams and MSC Nastran compared to the traditional analytical approach
• The model built with realistic flexibility correlates well with the physical measurements for slider displacement, knee force and hip force
• Accurate modeling of the robot’s leg enables the engineers to investigate the performance of the complete robot in tasks such as walking or running over different types of terrain as a next step