AN INTERPOLATION TECHNIQUE FOR IMPROVED ROBOT TRACKING ACCURACY

Significant work in robot calibration has been done over the past seve ral years. The calibration process assumes a kinematic model and perfo rms a series of experiments to determine the parameters of the model. Current research focuses on the development of models and the measurem ent techniques to best estimate the parameters. This paper takes a dif ferent approach. It proposes a path correction algorithm which examine s a predetermined path and identifies a set of critical points. These critical points are taught by the robot programmer and the error at th ese points is recorded. The error at the other points along the path i s determined by interpolation. The effort required to teach a robot pa th using this approach is dramatically reduced. Also, there is no need for the complicated experiments currently required by the global cali bration methods. The paper develops the approach and presents an examp le using an industrial robot.