A sensor-based approach for error compensation of industrial robotic workcells

Industrial robotic manipulators have excellent repeatability while accuracy is significantly poorer. Numerous error sources in the robotic workcell contributes to the accuracy problem. Modeling and identification of all the errors to achieve the required levels of accuracy may be difficult. To resolve the accuracy issues, a sensor based indirect error compensation approach is proposed in this paper where the errors are compensated online via measurements of the work object. The sensor captures a point cloud of the work object and with the CAD model of the work object, the actual relative pose of the sensor frame and work object frame can be established via a point cloud registration. Once this relationship has been established, the robot will be able to move the tool accurately relative to the work object frame near the point of compensation. A data pre-processing technique is proposed to reduce computation time and prevent a local minima solution during point cloud registration. A simulation study is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.