Bounding boxes

A bounding box is a region of interest for the localization. The localization engine looks for objects only inside the active bounding box. Bounding boxes work in both Bin Picking Studio (BPS) and Locator Studio (LS).

Use a bounding box to:

• Localize objects only in certain areas of the scene, for example when there are several bins with the same kind of object in one scene.

• Remove false positives outside the region of interest.

• Speed up the localization.

Bounding boxes are optional. Without one, the localization searches for objects in the whole scene (point cloud).

The localization configuration interface.

1 Configuration

The right pane of the Localization page has two tabs:

• Localized objects – the list of localized objects and their properties.

• Bounding boxes – the management of bounding boxes.

You set up bounding boxes on the Bounding boxes tab. On the Localized objects tab you can only switch between the bounding boxes you have set up.

The Bounding boxes tab (selected) in the localization configuration interface.

1.1 Main toolbar

The main toolbar manages the list of bounding boxes. It has two parts:

• List management actions on the left – actions for the whole list.

• Active bounding box selector on the right – selects the active bounding box.

The main toolbar: list management actions (left) and the active bounding box selector (right).

1.1.1 List management actions

• Add new – adds a new bounding box.

• Visibility toggle – shows either only the active bounding box or all bounding boxes.

• List removal – removes all bounding boxes.

• Bounding box configuration import – imports a bounding box configuration from a .pbbcf file.

• Bounding box configuration export – exports the current bounding box configuration to a .pbbcf file.

1.1.2 Active bounding box selector

The selector sets which bounding box is used for the next localization run. It lists the IDs of all bounding boxes and a special X option, which turns off the bounding box.

• To make a bounding box active, click its ID.

• Only one bounding box can be active at a time.

• In the visualizer, the active bounding box is blue and the others are grey.

The active bounding box (in the middle) is blue.

1.2 Bounding box actions

Each bounding box in the list has these controls:

• Status indicator – shows whether the bounding box has unsaved changes.

• Visibility toggle – shows or hides the bounding box.

• Duplicate button – duplicates the bounding box.

• Set initial flag – makes this the bounding box that is activated when the solution is deployed.

• Delete button – deletes the bounding box.

Bounding box actions.

1.3 Bounding box properties

When you select a bounding box in the list, a form with its properties opens:

• ID – a unique identifier. The robot program uses it to activate the bounding box at runtime.

• Name – a name to recognize the bounding box.

• Size (Width/Height/Depth) – the dimensions of the bounding box.

• Position – the position of the bounding box relative to the origin of the scan (camera space).

• Rotation – the rotation of the bounding box relative to the origin of the scan (camera space).

The buttons in the top right corner copy the properties to the clipboard and paste them from it.

Bounding box properties.

You can also change the selected bounding box directly in the visualizer. When you select it, the 3D object tools panel appears.

Resizing a bounding box with the 3D object tools.

The tools, from left to right:

• Move – drag a marker to move the bounding box along an axis.

• Rotate – drag a marker to rotate the bounding box around an axis.

• Resize – drag a marker to change the size of the bounding box along an axis.

• Reset – resets the bounding box to its default values.

2 Runtime

When the solution is deployed, each vision system activates its bounding box with the Initial flag.

To switch to another bounding box later, the robot program sends the Change localization bounding box action request. See Action requests (there is one request for Bin Picking Studio and one for Locator Studio). The request has two required parameters:

• the ID of the vision system

• the ID of the bounding box to activate

Activate the bounding box before you send the Scan request. Otherwise it is not used for that localization run.

In the deployment visualizer, the Bounding Boxes widget shows the active bounding box of each vision system in bold.

The deployment visualizer with the Bounding Boxes widget open. The active bounding box is “Left – ID: 1”.