Process and quality control with a video camera, for a floor-tilling robot

The paper describes the development of a floor-tiling robot. Both the devel opment and the performance measurements of the robot were carried out with a graphic simulation system. Based on those measurements and on a time stud y of the corresponding manual work, the robot's work output is expected to be 2-5 times higher than that of the manual work. It was decided to concent rate, at this stage of the development, on the robot's autonomy at a workst ation, which means that all operations at a workstation - stabilizing and c alibrating, loading tiles, etc. - including real-time quality assurance (QA ) are done without human intervention, while the transfer between workstati ons is assisted by an operator. The QA function has to identify the exact l ocation and orientation of tiles to be taken, since they may be expected to differ from those specified in the robot's program. This is needed in orde r to allow accurate placing of the tiles in straight lines and with a unifo rm distance between them. Additionally, the QA function has to identify def ective tiles. A computer vision system was developed to perform the QA func tions. The prototype, its operational principles, and the experiments are d escribed. The system's limitations are discussed together with needs for fu rther research. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.