RoboNet: a Neural Network Based Kinematic Parameter Identification Model

Abstract

The positioning accuracy of a robot is crucial for its industrial applications. A common way to improve such accuracy is through robot calibration, which mostly aims to identify the errors of a robot’s kinematic parameters. However, while a robot kinematic model being a highly nonlinear system with non-Gaussian noises, approaches could cause truncation error when approximating such nonlinearity, resulting in a less sufficient calibration result. To address this issue, this paper innovatively proposes a neural network-based approach: the RoboNet, which identifies the kinematic parameters by nonlinearly approximating the error function of each parameter with neurons and nonlinear activation functions. It also provides a unified architecture for kinematic parameters identification of the robot calibration process, so that with simple modifications, RoboNet could be applied to the various robot calibration processes. And supported by the simulation results, RoboNet can accurately identify the errors in kinematic parameters and is robust against flawed data.