Title: Vision-based robotic path following

Authors: Abdullah Mohammed; Lihui Wang

Addresses: Virtual Systems Research Centre, University of Skövde, 541 28 Skövde, Sweden ' Virtual Systems Research Centre, University of Skövde, 541 28 Skövde, Sweden

Abstract: Most robotic manufacturing applications nowadays require tedious and expensive pre-programming of the chosen robot, each time when a new task is introduced. In order to eliminate the tedious robot programming for better productivity, this research proposes an adaptive approach that allows a robot to follow any arbitrary robot path defined by an operator. A so-developed system was designed to monitor and control the path following operation locally or remotely through an established web-based architecture, without the need of extra programming. The objective of the research is achieved by integrating an image processing module with a robotic system. The real benefits of such a system are the ability to control and monitor the stepwise processing stages, as well as to automate the whole operation to a certain level of control defined in advance. In particular, this paper introduces a prototype that can be extended to various industrial applications, such as arc welding, laser cutting and water jet cutting, which require controlling the 2D or 3D path of a robot.

Keywords: robotic path following; image processing; robot vision; adaptive manufacturing; robot monitoring; robot control; arc welding; laser cutting; water jet cutting; welding robots; robot cutting.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRS.2013.051315

International Journal of Mechanisms and Robotic Systems, 2013 Vol.1 No.1, pp.95 - 111

Received: 30 Apr 2012
Accepted: 03 Oct 2012
Published online: 12 Jul 2014 *

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