Purpose -Paint path planning for industrial robots is critical for uniform paint distribution, process cycle time and material waste, etc. However, paint path planning is still a costly and time-consuming process. Currently paint path planning has always caused a bottle-neck for manufacturing automation because typical manual teaching methods are tedious, error-prone and skill-dependent. Hence, it is essential to develop automated tool path-planning methods to replace manual paint path planning. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing automated tool path-planning methods, and investigate their advantages and disadvantages. Design/methodology/approach -The approach takes the form of a review of automated tool path-planning methods, to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of the current technologies. Findings -Paint path planning is a very complicated task considering complex parts, paint process requirements and complicated spraying tools. There are some research and development efforts in this area. Based on the review of the methods used for paint path planning and simulation, the paper concludes that: the tessellated CAD model formats have many advantages in paint path planning and paint deposition simulation. However, the tessellated CAD model formats lack edge and connection information. Hence, it may not be suitable for some applications requiring edge following, such as welding. For the spray gun model, more complicated models, such as 2D models, should be used for both path planning and paint distribution simulation. Paint path generation methods should be able to generate a paint path for complex automotive parts without assumptions, such as presupposing a part with a continuous surface. Practical implications -The paper makes possible automated path generation for spray-painting process using industrial robots such that the pathplanning time can be reduced, the product quality improved, etc. Originality/value -The paper provides a useful review of current paint path-planning methodologies based on the CAD models of parts.

No abstract

No abstract

This paper describes an industrial robot joint offset calibration method called the virtual line-based single-point constraint approach. Previous methods such as using CMM, laser trackers or cameras are limited by the cost or the resolution. The proposed method relies mainly upon a laser pointer attached on the end-effector and single position-sensitive detector (PSD) arbitrarily located on the workcell. The automated calibration procedure (about three minutes) involves aiming the laser lines loaded by the robot towards the center of the PSD surface from various robot positions and orientations. The intersections of each pair of laser lines eventually should converge to the same point after compensating the joint offsets. An optimization model and algorithm have been formulated to identify the robot offset. For the highly precise feedback, a segmented PSD with a position resolution of better than 0.1 µm is employed. The mean accuracy of robot localization is up to 0.02 mm , and the mean error of the parameter identification is less than 0.08 degrees. Both simulations and experiments implemented on an ABB industrial robot verify the feasibility of the proposed method and demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed calibration system. The goal of fast, automated, low-cost, and high precision offset calibration are achieved.

In an industrial robot automation system (robot cell), the relationship between robot, tools and work piece are needed to be identified, so called robot cell calibration. This paper presents the recent progress of industrial robot automation system calibration. An industrial perspective is adopted to review methodologies, which are from either industrial products or published R&D results conducted by the robotics industry. After analyzing the customer demands, the general industrial robot cell calibration method with the define robot cell and workflow concept is proposed to solve the easy-touse and cost-efficiency issue in robot cell calibration. The successful implementations in ABB simulation software (RobotStudio) and in ABB robot teach pendant of the proposed method demonstrate how a standard calibration package solves all the needs of the calibration.