Automatic program generation for welding robots from CAD

Abstract

Industrial robotic automation is a key tool for manufacturing companies to achieve flexibility and low production costs. However, the cost associated with re-programming limits the economic viability for low production volumes. Automated Offline Programming is an approach that uses software algorithms to generate robot programs with little or no human effort. This contrasts with typical programming methods that require considerable human effort from highly skilled operators. This paper presents an Automated Offline Programming solution developed for a steel fabrication company and details the motion planning algorithms. It also describes a novel technique to decompose the welding path motion planning problem into sequential sub-problems such that greedy search techniques can be employed. The results show that this programming approach is effective for robot welding applications and reduces programming effort to effectively no cost. Abstract-Industrial robotic automation is a key tool for manufacturing companies to achieve flexibility and low production costs. However, the cost associated with re-programming limits the economic viability for low production volumes. Automated Offline Programming is an approach that uses software algorithms to generate robot programs with little or no human effort. This contrasts with typical programming methods that require considerable human effort from highly skilled operators. This paper presents an Automated Offline Programming solution developed for a steel fabrication company and details the motion planning algorithms. It also describes a novel technique to decompose the welding path motion planning problem into sequential sub-problems such that greedy search techniques can be employed. The results show that this programing approach is effective for robot welding applications and reduces programming effort to effectively no cost.

Projection-based terrain feature line extraction from point cloud data

“…A work on edge and corner detection from point clouds was also presented [12], which relies on an adaptive density-based threshold to identify edges and statistics of curvature vector clusters to identify corners. Their method is also bene cial for robotic welding, which was earlier done with the help of 3D CAD models [13]. Another work on edge detection on point clouds [14] identi es sharp edge features by analysing eigenvalues of covariance matrices from k-nearest neighbours.…”

CAD-Based Robot Programming Solution for Wire Harness Manufacturing in Aeronautic Sector

“…CAD-based robot programming is a long-time paradigm [3,5] applied in many different industrial sectors. From welding [6][7][8] to spraying [9][10][11], several works took advantage of the CAD information of the parts and pieces to generate robot trajectories. Even so, the approach is usually found in scenarios without uncertainty where the placement of all the elements of the application is perfectly known beforehand.…”

Digital Integration for Automatic Programming of Welding Robots

“…Modern OLP systems have collision detection methods which helps in programming safe paths for the welding torch. Using CAD models and collision detection algorithms can potentially enable automatic programming of welding robots (Larkin et al 2016).…”