Toward general industrial robot cell calibration

Abstract

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.

A Calibration Method for the Integrated Design of Finishing Robotic Workcells in the Aerospace Industry

“…According to the common terminology used in industrial robotics [14], the World Frame is the robot absolute reference. The Base Frame is the reference system which defines the robot zero position and it is located on the fixed base of the robot.…”

“…The robot's kinematic and dynamic errors strictly depend on the correspondence between the nominal and the real dimensions of every robot link, also referred as absolute positioning inaccuracy. The misalignment from nominal to real poses of each element which takes part to the manufacturing action in the workcell layout contributes to the relative positioning error [14], [15].…”

“…The workcell calibration is the action of matching the nominal and the real pose of every reference frame which enters into the definition of the whole robotic manufacturing cycle. So a full workcell calibration considers both the singular parts of the robot (absolute calibration) and the poses of the workpieces, tools and mechatronic devices involved in finishing and machining (relative calibration) [14], [15].…”

“…Concluding, relative calibration highly depends on the specific robotic workcell configuration and manufacturing application so few methods are proposed as general solution for the issue. In [14] another method is presented, but it has still to be fitted into an integrated design loop involving CAD-based simulation and OLP tools.…”

A Practical Calibration Method for Spray Painting Robot in Factory

“…By means of using the Least-squares programming, the actual geometric parameters are identified through the kinematic models and measuring data. Owing to its generality, this method has been popular used until now and extent to parallel robots [15] and the robot systems with external cells [16]. Pertinent application software has emerged like Dynacal from Dynalog [17] as well.…”