A new approach for transportation of objects within production systems by automated throwing and capturing is investigated. This paper presents an implementation, consisting of a throwing robot and a capturing robot. The throwing robot uses a linear and the capturing robot a rotary axis. The throwing robot is capable of throwing cylinder-shaped objects onto a target point with high precision. The capturing robot there smoothly grips the cylinders during flight by means of a rotational movement. In order to synchronize the capturing robot and the cylinder's pose and velocity, its trajectory has to be modeled as well as the motion sequences of both robots. The throwing and capturing tasks are performed by the robots automatically without the use of any external sensor system.

A bio-inspired throwing robot with two degrees of freedom (DOF) was developed for a science center. It has a rotary axis to turn the robot like a human his body and a second rotary axis to throw objects like a human with his arm. With this kinematic, the robot is capable to throw objects into predefined positions within a given 3D-space. The goal of this robot is to demonstrate visitors in the science center robotic throwing with a simple kinematic. In experiments the visitors can learn how the angle of throwing and the speed of throwing determines the trajectories of thrown objects. Student-classes who want to spend more time for the robot can also calculate such trajectories. Therefore, the required mathematical models for this robot are also presented in this paper.

A new approach for the transportation of objects within production systems by throwing and capturing is investigated. For the purpose of throwing objects in direct hits into a capturing device, the trajectory has to meet it in a predefined position. Therefore, the corresponding trajectory has to be simulated and appropriately controlled by the required launch angle as well as launch velocity. This paper presents a holistic approach for the modeling of trajectories for cylinder-shaped objects. The calculation of the position and orientation of the cylinder for each point of time during the flight is enabled by this approach. Furthermore, an algorithm for the determination of the launch parameters in order to meet the capturing device in a predefined position as well as angular orientation is presented.

In flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) "throwing" as a new approach for transportation of parts between machines is proposed. "Throwing" brings up the problem of capturing. For capturing fast flying objects grippers are required, which have a closing time of less than 10 ms. In this paper two types of mechanically controlled grippers are proposed. At the first type of a gripper the kinetic energy of the flying object is used to close the gripper. With that a flying ball with a mass of 60 g and a speed of 10 m/s can be captured with a closing time of the gripper of 5 ms. At the second type of gripper a pre-stressed spring is used to close the gripper. With that a flying ball with a mass of 20 g and a speed of 10 m/s can be captured also with a closing time of 5 ms.