3D Metrology Using a Collaborative Robot with a Laser Triangulation Sensor

Industrial robots are a key element in Smart Manufacturing systems. They can perform many different tasks such as assembly, pick-and-place, or even 3D metrology operations. In order to perform 3D metrology, the robot is equipped with a 2D laser triangulation sensor. The accuracy of the measurements made by this system is dependent of an accurate TCP (Tool Centre Point) calibration and the accuracy of the robot. In this paper, a TCP calibration method is applied to a collaborative robot. The hand-guiding feature of this kind of robots is used to establish a human-robot interaction to obtain the laser sensor TCP using a calibration sphere. Experimental results are presented to validate the procedure and evaluate the quality of the measurements.