CLOSED-FORM SOLUTION FOR THE SENSOR REGISTRATION PROBLEM USING ONLY POSITION INFORMATION

Sensors, mounted on the dexterous end of a robot, can be used for feed back control or calibration. When you mount a sensor on a robot it bec omes necessary to find the pose (orientation and position) of the sens or relative to the robot. This is the sensor registration problem. Man y researchers have provided closed-form solutions to the sensor regist ration problem; however, the published solutions apply only to sensors that can measure a complete pose (three positions and three orientati ons). Many sensors, however, can provide only position information; th ey cannot measure the orientation of an object. This article provides a closed-form solution to the sensor registration problem applicable w hen: (1) the sensor can provide only position information and (2) the robot can move along and rotate about straight lines. (C) 1994 John Wi ley & Sons, Inc.