Automation of Polishing Work by an Industrial Robot. 2nd Report, Automatic Generation of Collision-Free Polishing Path.

Abstract

The study deals with the generation of collision-free control data of a polishing robot with 6 degrees of freedom for workpieces with complicated curved surfaces. The collision between the polishing tool and workpiece is an important problem to be solved in terms of carrying out polishing work automatically. To obtain the collision-free polishing path, the collision is subjected to check, and the collision avoidance tool axis vector is determined on the basis of a solid model of the workpiece and the tool shape representative points. The generated collision-free polishing path is converted into the actual robot control data, taking account of the robot structure. The system is found to be effective from the polishing experiments of workpieces with overhung curved surfaces.