An intelligent vibratory conveyor for the individual object transportation in two dimensions

This paper describes the operation principle of a vibratory conveyor that is capable of moving objects in two dimensions. The conveyor consists of a flat rigid plate with three translational degrees of freedom that performs oscillations in all three cardinal directions. This leads to a non-zero horizontal frictional force if an object is placed on top of the manipulator surface. On the experimental setup, this force causes the object to move at speeds up to 0.35 m/s. A model of the physical effects leading to the transportation is given. The calculated transportation velocity is compared to the velocity measured on the experimental setup. The operation principle encourages the creation of an array-like setup consisting of many small manipulator surfaces. Every one of them is capable of passing an object to one of the adjacent manipulators. By operating these manipulators in parallel, a large number of objects can be moved simultaneously, resulting in much lower accelerations and no collisions of the handling devices.