A study on robot path planning from a solid model

Abstract

Abstract CAD/CAM technologies have been developed and are beginning to penetrate rapidly into industries. At present, however, there are many problems that should be solved before CAD/CAM technologies can play their proper role in the total process. In an effort to improve CAD/CAM current circumstances, a trial CAE system which generates an operation path of a robot from a solid‐model built‐in CAD process, has been examined. In this system, solid models are built by performing set operations such as addition, subtraction, intersection between several primitives or solid models. Processing is made for a solid model represented by B‐rep (boundary representation). To ease the processing, curved faces such as spherical, cylindrical, or conical surfaces, are approximated by several flat planes. As a first step, by assuming Gaussian spatial distribution for a painting gun, path planning of a painting robot for a convex solid body has been examined. A scanning plane is defined for each flat plane and a path of robot effector is generated on this plane.