3D complex surface generation through procedural robot motion

The paper approaches the “surface generation” problem, using the procedural motion technique for vertical articulated robots. Free-form surfaces, described from CAD files, are off-line processed providing the tool path data that will be passed to the 6-axis robot. This approach considers the normal vector orientation to the surface to be generated (e.g., in finishing operations), so that the vertical articulated robot continuously maintains a perpendicular inclination of the tool (the approach vector of the tool-attached frame) relative to the surface to be generated during robot motion. The surface generation technique is applied to a 6-d.o.f. (degree of freedom) vertical articulated Adept Viper s 650 industrial robot, for which experimental results are included.