Efficient inline measuring in robot applications

Inhalt:
This paper is addressing the increased need for reconfigurable robotic systems in manufacturing by investigating and developing industrial robots ability to perform geometrical measurement on large work piece objects. This is done by using a movable electro optical coordinate measuring system combined with a laser distance sensor (LDS). A test case was set up to measure geometrical entities representing a reference system on a large ship propeller blade. Firstly, the paper describes a method to calibrate the LDS position (measuring range vector) relative to the robot tool center point (TCP) and the CMM. Secondly, the setup was used to measure the reference system on the propeller by comparing results from manual CMM contact measurements with non-contact LDS measurements.