Recent Advances in Robot Grinding

Robot finishing is a very challenging application because of the related numerous unsolved technical problems. Among these, finishing process control and robot programming are the most critical. ESPRIT Project 2640 was launched two and a half years ago with main objective to develop a new robot grinding cell based on advanced solutions to the above problems. In addition, the development and integration of a vision based quality inspection station has traced a completely new approach to robot finishing. The achievements of the project with respect to robot programming, process modelling and quality inspection will be presented in this paper.