INVERSE KINEMATICS ROBOT CALIBRATION BY SPLINE FUNCTIONS

Inverse kinematics calibration is a technique used to improve the accu racy of robot manipulators when they are programmed off-line. This tec hnique requires an approximation of position deviations of the end-eff ector of the robot. In this paper three-variate splines are used as ap proximating functions; a stable and efficient algorithm for their comp utation is presented. Many experimental tests are performed to evaluat e the merits of the approximation. The improvements in the accuracy of the robot, obtained after calibration, demonstrate the validity of th e method.