Scientific publications
Calibration Procedure of a Multi-Camera System: Process Uncertainty Budget
The Automated six Degrees of Freedom (DoF) definition of industrial components has become an added value in production processes as long as the required accuracy is guaranteed. This is where multi-camera systems are finding their niche in the market. These systems provide, among other things, the ease of automating tracking processes without human intervention and knowledge about vision and/or metrology. In addition, the cost of integrating a new sensor into the complete system is negligible compared to other multi-tracker systems. The increase in information from different points of view in multi-camera systems raises the accuracy, based on the premise that the more points of view, the lower the level of uncertainty. This work is devoted to the calibration procedures of multi-camera systems, which is decisive to achieve high performance, with a particular focus on the uncertainty budget. Moreover, an evaluation methodology has been carried out, which is key to determining the level of accuracy of the measurement system.
​
Authors: Ibai Leizea, Imanol Herrera and Pablo Puerto
Published: 4 January 2023
​
Influence of the velocity on quasi-static deflections of industrial articulated robots
​
This article presents the measurement and analysis of the influence of velocity on the quasi-static deflections of industrial manipulators of three different manufacturers. Quasi-static deflection refers to the deflection of the end effector position of articulated robots during movement at low velocity along a predefined trajectory. Based on earlier reported observations by the authors, there exists a difference in the static and quasi-static deflections considering the same points along a trajectory. This work investigates this difference to assess the applicability of robotic compliance calibration at low velocities. For this assessment, the deflections of three industrial articulated robots were measured at different speeds and loads. Considering the similarity among the robot models used in this investigation, this work also elaborates on the potential influence of the measurement procedure on the measured deflections and its implications for the compliance calibration of articulated robots. For all industrial articulated robots in this investigation, the quasi-static deflections are significantly larger than the static ones but similar in trend. Additionally, the magnitude of the quasi-static deflections presents a proportional relationship to the Cartesian velocity.
​
Authors: Monica Katherine Gonzalez, Nikolas Theissen, Nora Agirre, Jon Larrañaga, Patxi Hacala and Andreas Archenti
Published: 7 January 2023
​
Analyses of Key Variables to Industrialize a Multi-Camera System to Guide Robotic Arms
Robotic arms are widely used in sectors such as automotive or assembly logistics due to their flexibility and cost. Other manufacturing sectors would like to take advantage of this technology, however, higher accuracy is required for their purposes. This paper integrated a multi-camera system to achieve the requirements for milling and drilling tasks in aeronautic parts. A closed-loop framework allows the position of the robot’s end-effector to be corrected with respect to a static reference. This is due to the multi-camera system tracking the position of both elements due to the passive targets on their surface. The challenge is to find an auxiliary system to measure these targets with an uncertainty that allows the desired accuracy to be achieved in high volumes (>3 m3). Firstly, in a reduced scenario, a coordinate measuring machine (CMM), a laser tracker (LT), and portable photogrammetry (PP) have been compared following the guidelines from VDI/VDE 2634-part 1. The conclusions allowed us to jump into an industrial scenario and run a similar test with a higher payload than in the laboratory. The article ends with an application example demonstrating the suitability of the solution.
Authors: Pablo Puerto, Ibai Leizea, Imanol Herrera and Asier Barrios
Published: 9 January 2023
​