A Method for Determining and Correcting Robot Position and Orientation Errors Due to Manufacturing

Abstract

A method is presented for calibration of a robot to correct position and orientation errors due to manufacturing. The method is based on the shape matrix robot kinematic description. Each joint is individually and successively moved in order to explicitly calculate the shape matrix of each link. In addition, methods to correct for the errors in both the forward and inverse kinematic solutions are presented. The modification of the forward solution is a simple task. The modification of the inverse kinematic solution is a difficult problem and is achieved by an iterative technique which supplements the closed-form solution. An example of the calibration and inverse solution is presented to show the improvement in the accuracy of the robot.