Dynamic error compensation for industrial robot based on thermal effect model

•This paper builds the thermal distribution model and deformation model.•This paper presents a method to determine the kinematic parameters which are greatly affect the position accuracy.•This paper presents a convenient and suitable compensation method of temperature error for industrial field.

This paper analyses the kinematic parameters and the positioning accuracy of robot end effectors influenced by temperature factors. Temperature factors include robot self-heating and environmental temperature changes. This paper also builds the thermal distribution model and deformation model using finite element theory. A thermal compensation strategy is presented to validate the significant correlation between the robot kinematics parameters and previous thermal models mentioned above. It is convenient and suitable for industrial field. Thermal compensation is experimentally proved to adjust the position error of the end effectors by less than 0.1 mm.