Vision-based robotic path following

Abstract

Most robotic manufacturing applications nowadays require tedious and expensive pre-programming of the chosen robot, each time when a new task is introduced. In order to eliminate the tedious robot programming for better productivity, this research proposes an adaptive approach that allows a robot to follow any arbitrary robot path defined by an operator. A so-developed system was designed to monitor and control the path following operation locally or remotely through an established web-based architecture, without the need of extra programming. The objective of the research is achieved by integrating an image processing module with a robotic system. The real benefits of such a system are the ability to control and monitor the stepwise processing stages, as well as to automate the whole operation to a certain level of control defined in advance. In particular, this paper introduces a prototype that can be extended to various industrial applications, such as arc welding, laser cutting and water jet cutting, which require controlling the 2D or 3D path of a robot.