Improvements of robot positioning accuracy and drilling perpendicularity for autonomous drilling robot system

Abstract

The low accuracy of Autonomous Drilling Robot System (ADRS) has precluded their usage in aircraft assembly. Aiming at improving the accuracy of ADRS, three efforts are made in this paper. Firstly, a novel surface normal measurement and attitude adjusting method are proposed to guarantee the perpendicularity of holes. Secondly, an improvement compensation method is made for absolute positioning accuracy of industrial robot by using Gauss-Newton method. Thirdly, during the calibration of tool center point(TCP), which is one of the key technologies of offline programming control system, two balls are used in this method to solve the problem of low accuracy and inefficiency of traditional method using pointed end. Finally, both simulations and experiments are conducted to test the effect of the improvements and the results prove the improvements are effective.