Autonomous viewing and guidance for mobile pin welding inside a ship block

This paper describes a lightweight and low cost approach to viewing and guidance of a mobile manipulator for pin welding. Currently, this is an arduous manual task necessary for outfitting the interior of ship blocks. An embarked vision system has been developed that senses the bulkhead, identifies stiffener positions and windows, and decides on stud distribution. As a result, the 3D coordinates for the pins to weld are delivered to the arm controller. The developed system has been tested in laboratory trials using a real-scale sample of bulkhead, showing a good performance in terms of robustness to visual clutter and stud positioning accuracy.