Skip to main content
Log in

Kinematic calibration of a six-axis serial robot using distance and sphere constraints

  • ORIGINAL ARTICLE
  • Published:
The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper describes a kinematic calibration method developed to improve the accuracy of a six-axis serial industrial robot in a specific target workspace, using distance and sphere constraints. A simulation study demonstrates the ability of the calibration approach to identify the kinematic parameters, regardless of measurement noise. Experimental validation shows that the robot’s accuracy inside the target workspace is significantly improved by reducing the mean and maximum distance errors from 0.698 to 0.086 mm and from 1.321 to 0.127 mm, respectively. The experimental data are collected using a Renishaw precision touch probe mounted on the flange of a FANUC LR Mate 200iC and a special triangular plate with three datum 2-in spheres 300 mm apart. The calibration method uses an optimization model based on fitting several probed positions on spheres and minimizing the residual of the spheres’ center-to-center distances.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Roth Z, Mooring B, Ravani B (1987) An overview of robot calibration. IEEE J Robot Autom 3(5):377–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Elatta AY, Gen LP, Zhi FL, Daoyuan Y, Fei L (2004) An overview of robot calibration. Inf Technol J 3(1):74–78

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Majarena AC, Santolaria J, Samper D, Aguilar JJ (2010) An overview of kinematic and calibration models using internal/external sensors or constraints to improve the behavior of spatial parallel mechanisms. Sensors 10(1):10256–10297

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Joubair A, Slamani M, Bonev IA (2012) Kinematic calibration of a 3-DOF planar parallel robot. Ind Robot 39(4):392–400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Joubair A, Nubiola A, Bonev IA (2013) Calibration efficiency analysis based on five observability indices and two calibration models for a six-axis industrial robot. SAE Int J Aerosp 6(1):161–168

    Google Scholar 

  6. Švaco M, Šekoranja B, Šuligoj F, Jerbić B (2014) Calibration of an industrial robot using a stereo vision system. Procedia Engineering 69(1):459–463

    Google Scholar 

  7. Xueyou R, Shenghua YE (2007) Method of robot calibration based on laser tracker. Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering 9

  8. Weidong Z, Biao M, Yinglin K (2014) Kinematic modeling and parameter identification of a new circumferential drilling machine for aircraft assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol. doi:10.1007/s00170-014-5786-7

    Google Scholar 

  9. Joubair A, Slamani M, Bonev IA (2013) Kinematic calibration of a five-bar planar parallel robot using all working modes. Robot Comput Integr Manuf 29(4):15–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Driels MR, Swayze LW, Potter LS (1993) Full-pose calibration of a robot manipulator using a coordinate-measuring machine. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 8(1):34–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Nubiola A, Slamani M, Joubair A, Bonev IA (2013) Comparison of two calibration methods for a small industrial robot based on an optical CMM and a laser tracker. Robotica: 1–20

  12. Joubair A, Slamani M, Bonev IA (2012) A novel XY-Theta precision table and a geometric procedure for its kinematic calibration. Robot Comput Integr Manuf 28(1):57–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Zhong XL, Lewis JM, Nagy F (1996) Autonomous robot calibration using a trigger probe. Robot Auton Syst 18(4):395–410

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Ikits M, Hollerbach JM (1997) Kinematic calibration using a plane constraint. In Proceedings of the 1997 International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3191–3196

  15. Zhuang H, Motaghedi SH, and Roth ZS (1999) Robot calibration with planar constraints. In Proceedings of the 1999 I.E. International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 805–810

  16. Besnard S, Khalil W, Garcia G (2000) Geometric calibration of robots using multiple plane constraints. Advances in Robot Kinematics: 61–70

  17. Tang Z, Niu Z, Liu X (2006) Autonomous calibration research of polishing robot. In Proceedings of the 6th Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation, pp. 8938–8942

  18. Hage H, Bidaud P, Jardin N (2011) Practical consideration on the identification of the kinematic parameters of the Stäubli TX90 robot. In 13th World Congress in Mechanism and Machine Science, Guanajuato

    Google Scholar 

  19. Chiu YJ, Perng MH (2003) Self-calibration of a general hexapod manipulator using cylinder constraints. Int J Mach Tools Manuf 43(10):1051–1066

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Goswami A, Quaid A, Peshkin M (1993) Complete parameter identification of a robot from partial pose information. In Proceedings of the 1993 I.E. International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 168–173

  21. Kim HS (2005) Kinematic calibration of a Cartesian parallel manipulator. Int J Control Autom Syst 3(3):453–460

    Google Scholar 

  22. Huang T, Hong ZY, Mei JP, Chetwynd DG (2006) Kinematic Calibration of the 3-DOF Module of a 5-DOF Reconfigurable Hybrid Robot using a Double-Ball-Bar System. In Proceedings of the 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on intelligent robots and systems, pp. 508–512

  23. Chen H, Fuhlbrigge T, Choi S, et al. (2008) Practical Industrial Robot Zero Offset Calibration. In Proceedings of the 2008 Automation on Science and Engineering IEEE Conference, pp. 516–521

  24. Hoppe WC (2011) Method and system to provide improved accuracies in multi-jointed robots through kinematic robot model parameters determination. Patent No. US 7,904,202 B2. Mar. 8, 2011

  25. Craig JJ (2004) Introduction to robotics mechanics and control, 3rd edn. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River

    Google Scholar 

  26. Ahn SJ, Rauh W, Warnecke HJ (2001) Least-squares orthogonal distances fitting of circle, sphere, ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola. Pattern Recogn 34(12):2283–2303

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ahmed Joubair.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Joubair, A., Bonev, I.A. Kinematic calibration of a six-axis serial robot using distance and sphere constraints. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 77, 515–523 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-014-6448-5

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-014-6448-5

Keywords

Navigation