Modeling Robot Contour Processes

Robot contour processes include those with contact force like car body grinding or deburring of complex castings, as well as those with little or no contact force like inspection. This paper describes ways of characterizing, identifying, and estimating contours and robot trajectories. Contour and robot are modeled as stochastic processes in order to emphasixe that both successive robot cycles and successive industrial workpieces are similar but not exactly the same. The stochastic models can be used to identify the state of a workpiece or process, or to design a filter to estimate workpiece shape and robot position from robot-based measurements.