Title: Calibration and using a laser profile scanner for 3D robotic welding

Authors: Michal Chalus; Jindrich Liska

Addresses: Department of Cybernetics, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitni 8, 301 00 Pilsen, Czech Republic ' Department of Cybernetics, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitni 8, 301 00 Pilsen, Czech Republic

Abstract: This paper describes first functions of a developed cognitive module for 3D robotic welding using TIG or laser technology. This area is constantly evolving with the needs to solve complex problems of welding automatisation and robotisation, and also thanks to the continuous advances in measurement technology and robotics. Besides, the use of welding robots for serial production with dedicated tightly defined trajectories, systems for automatic welding of a previously undefined path or paths, which the operator cannot manually define because of its complexity, are developed. This paper covers the general description of the cognitive module and its required functions. Then necessary knowledge about a pose representation and transformation is presented. After that, procedures for a calibration of a profile scanner and its using for 3D model construction based on a depth map are described in more detail. The cognitive module prototype is tested in the task of automatic cavity repair.

Keywords: 3D robotic welding; tungsten inert gas welding; TIG welding; laser welding; laser profile scanner; hand-eye calibration; 3D model construction; depth map; image processing; trajectory identification; cognitive robot.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCVR.2018.093966

International Journal of Computational Vision and Robotics, 2018 Vol.8 No.4, pp.351 - 374

Received: 29 Apr 2017
Accepted: 06 Sep 2017
Published online: 10 Aug 2018 *

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