Development of a position sensitive device and control method for automated robot calibration

This paper introduces our novel calibration system approach potentially capable of automatically calibrating industrial robots. The proposed system consists of a camera and laser fixture attached to the robot tool center point (TCP), a PC-based interface, and a new position sensitive calibration device (PSCD). This wireless calibration device comprised of 2 fixed position sensitive detectors (PSD's) tilted with an angle between them to reflect the laser line from one PSD to another. Such device is capable of feeding back the movement information needed to localize the TCP frame relative to the device frame. The overall calibration system is designed to be faster, simpler and cheaper than any other methods. Throughout this paper we present and discuss our newly developed calibration device, the principle of our calibration system and the control approach needed to achieve automation of the entire system. Preliminary experiments demonstrated the feasibility of the developed calibration system including device hardware, software and calibration algorithms.