Increasing Robot Precision by Stroke Division

Abstract

Robots are increasingly performing complex tasks in industrial settings, such as welding, painting, and cutting, but their lower stiffness and repeatability, especially in the cheaper end of the market, limit performance. While previous research aimed to improve robot repeatability by optimizing the pose of the workpiece, these approaches were not feasible for large and complex paths. This paper proposes a novel approach of incorporating a second robot to adjust the workpiece’s position during the manufacturing process, thereby forming a single high-precision robotic system. This paper aims to investigate the feasibility of this approach. For this purpose, it presents a path planner to leverage the resulting additional degrees of freedom to achieve greater repeatability. The effectiveness of this planner is then compared to previous approaches.