Laser beam multi-position alignment approach for an automated industrial robot calibration

Robot calibration is widely used in the manufacture industry to enhance the accuracy of industrial robots. There are many reliable calibration systems in the market that are able to calibrate industrial robots. Those systems, however, are far from being a user friendly calibration tool; they are time consuming, very expensive, and usually requires too much human interaction. This paper proposes an innovative calibration approach for industrial robots able to overcome the problems that the current calibration systems are still facing. The proposed approach uses a control system capable of guiding the robot's tool center point to an accurate multi-position alignment. Using the data of several positions, we are able to calculate the joint offsets using calibration algorithms. Throughout this paper the overall calibration system is presented and discussed. Finally, preliminary experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of the overall calibration system including device hardware, software and calibration algorithms.