Industrial camera model positioned on an effector for automated tool center point calibration

Abstract

The study presents a novel, full model of an industrial camera suitable for robotic manipulator tool center point (TCP) calibration. The authors propose a new solution which employs a full camera model positioned on the effector of an industrial robotic arm. The proposed full camera model simulates the capture of a calibration pattern for use in automated TCP calibration. The study describes an experimental test robot stand for producing a reference data set, a full camera model, the parameters of a generally known camera obscura model, and a comparison of proposed solution with the camera obscura model. The results are discussed in the context of an innovative approach which features a full camera model to assist the TCP calibration process. The results showed that the full camera model produced greater accuracy, a significant benefit not provided by other state-of-the-art methods. In several cases, the absolute error produced was up to seven times lower than with the state-of-theart camera obscura model. The error for small rotation (max. of 5.) and small translation (max. of 20 mm) was 3.65 pixels. The results also highlighted the applicability of the proposed solution in real-life industrial processes.