Calibration methodology for multirobot assembly cell

Abstract

In the context of the industry 4.0, production lines must be flexible, easily configurable and quickly adaptable to the variation of production. For assembly operations, which are usually done by special machines or human operators, a multirobot cell gives a more flexible solution. Robots trajectories are generated using a CAD model of the cell with an offline programming software. The drawback when using offline programming is the difference between the real trajectories of robots and the theoretical ones. In this paper, a method to calibrate multirobot cell is proposed. This calibration consist in identifying the real positions and orientations of each robot frame with respect to the other. This operation allows to improve the accuracy of the robotic cell by reducing the gap between the CAD model and the physical cell. The calibration is carried out by using a laser profiler and a reference sphere.