Robotic motion planning and manipulation in an uncalibrated environment

The authors analyze planning and control problems in “robotic manipulation” in an uncalibrated environment consisting of a PUMA 560 robotic manipulator, a rotating turntable equipped with an encoder and a CCD camera based vision sensor fixed permanently on the ceiling. It is assumed that a part with a known shape but unknown orientation is placed on the turntable which is rotating with an unknown motion dynamics. Furthermore, the calibration parameters are a priori assumed to be unknown. The objective is to track the rotating part with an a priori specified relative orientation. The task considered is of importance in various problems concerning industrial automation, such as part-feeding and tool-changing