Hand-eye-calibration of a robotized thermography end-effector

Abstract

The application of active thermography applied as Lock-in or pulse thermography has been widely used in aerospace industry. Over the last years a number of activities had been undertaken to achieve a higher level of automation. Industrial robots are very versatile and allow a comparably easy integration of a measurement system in robotic workcell further the control unit. It is therefore possible to cover a large range of geometrical complex parts even on larger dimensions. The robot can be used for the positioning of the thermography camera and delivers the location of the robot flange coordinate system at the time of measurement automatically. It is then necessary to know the offset between flange coordinate system and camera coordinate system. The approach at DLR Augsburg of a robot based measuring system for industrial thermography applications has been presented in previous papers. With this paper DLR-Center for Lightweight-Production-Technology in Augsburg will give insight into current work in the area of hand-eye-calibration of a robotized thermography end-effector and results derived from first experiments.