Online robot calibration based on vision measurement

• We propose a vision-based online robot calibration method, which only requires several reference images.
• An efficient automatic approach is proposed to detect the corners from the images of the calibration board and the poses of the robot can be estimated from the detected corners.
• The great advantage of this online-self-calibration method is that the whole procedure of the robot calibration is automatically and without any manual intervention, which can make the robot calibration procedure completed online during the robot is working.
• The proposed approach is particularly suitable for the unknown environments, such as deep sea or outer space.

Robot calibration is a useful diagnostic method to improve positioning accuracy in robot production and maintenance. Unlike traditional calibration methods that require expensive equipment and complex steps, a vision-based online robot calibration method that only requires several reference images is presented in this paper. The method requires a camera that is rigidly attached to the robot end effector (EE), and a calibration board must be settled around the robot where the camera can see it. An efficient automatic approach to detect the corners from the images of the calibration board is proposed. The poses of the robot can be estimated from the detected corners. The kinematic parameters can be conducted automatically based on the known poses of the robot. Unlike in the existing self-calibration methods, the great advantage of this online self-calibration method is that the entire process of robot calibration is automatic and without any manual intervention, enabling the robot calibration to be completed online when the robot is working. Therefore, the proposed approach is particularly suitable for unknown environments, such as deep sea or outer space. In these high-temperature and/or high-pressure environments, the shapes of the robot links are easy to change. Thus, the robot kinematic parameters are changed by allowing the robot to grab objects with different qualities to verify the performance of the online robot calibration. Experimental studies on a GOOGOL GRB3016 robot show that the proposed method has high accuracy, convenience, and high efficiency.