Robotic Vision Inspection of Complex Joints for Automatic Welding

Abstract

Automatic welding of complex joints relies on scanning and inspection of the actual joint geometry, which is important for welding path planning and welding parameter setting. A robotic vision inspection system is presented in this paper to assess the geometry of complex joints before welding. The system can scan the joint with high accuracy and high resolutions via accurate system calibration and fast data synchronization. The scanned joint geometry is inspected to assess the quality of critical dimensions. Critical features are extracted for path planning, and the joint surface is segmented into different regions for assigning different welding parameters. Experimental results based on straight-joint and Y-joint are presented to show how the proposed system works.