CALIBRATION OF A 6 DOF ROBOTIC MANIPULATOR BASED ON A LOW-COST WIRE SENSORS MEASURING SYSTEM

This article presents the results of a research project which aimed to investigate the applicability of wire sensors in the kinematics calibration of robotic manipulators. One indispensable operation in calibration is the measurement of the position and orientation of the robotic gripper in a predefined set of locations in the work space. For this operation high-cost sensors are generally used, such as laser tracker systems. It would seem relevant to study the possibility of using low-cost sensors, investigating the performances that it is possible to obtain. With this aim, a study of simulation and experimentation was carried out on an anthropomorphic robot with 6 revolute degrees of freedom. In the simulation phase, with the aim to optimizing calibration, the influence of several parameters (number of sensors, positioning of sensors, model parameters, etc...) was studied. In the experimental phase, the efficiency of the optimized calibration procedure was verified by applying it to the real robot, achieving an accuracy close to the repeatability of the robot.