A global formulation of robot manipulator kinematic calibration based on statistical considerations

Abstract

In this paper, a novel approach to identify manipulator kinematic parameters is proposed. The main contribution in this work has two folds: (1) a global optimization scheme is developed which guarantees that an unique solution is always able to be found. (2) a statistical objective function is established which takes into account the effects of the measurement errors and the noise presented during experimental measurement. The algorithm has been tested using experimental data obtained from the STEAR/ISE Testbed Manipulator (STM) and it is shown that better results were found.