A practical approach for automated polishing system of free-form surface path generation based on industrial arm robot

• Published in: International journal of advanced manufacturing technology Vol. 93; no. 9-12; pp. 3921 - 3934
• Main Authors: Kharidege, Ahmed, Ting, Du Ting, Yajun, Zhang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer London 01.12.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Automation; CAE) and Design; Computer-Aided Engineering (CAD; Coordinate transformations; Engineering; Free form; Industrial and Production Engineering; Industrial robots; Jacobi matrix method; Jacobian matrix; Man-machine interfaces; Mechanical Engineering; Media Management; On-line systems; Original Article; Polishes; Polishing; Robot arms; Robots; Singularities; Surface geometry; Task space; Teach pendants; Time dependence; Virtual environments; Workpieces; Automated polishing system; Industrial robot; Path planning; Singularity analysis
• ISSN: 0268-3768; 1433-3015
• DOI: 10.1007/s00170-017-0726-y

In manufacturing environment where a robot arm is programmed to follow a specified path such as in polishing, the geometric coordinate transformation of an automated polishing system frames is needed for polishing workpiece surface. As the presence of kinematic singularities can extremely affect the robot’s performance, singularity regions in the task space for robot are clearly identified using determinant of the robot’s Jacobian matrix. Based on the free-form surface polishing requirements, programing an industrial robot with Teach Pendant manually is skill dependent and time consuming. Therefore, a scheme of an automatic polishing system is proposed, which includes a 6DOF arm robot. An automatic planning and programming system based on data from a CAD system is described to create robot paths. The robot program which contains the polishing path is generated in certain order using RoboGuide software in virtual environment. A Human Machine Interface has been used to control the entire polishing system online. Finally, the generated path is successfully applied in robotic polishing system. The experimental results prove that the proposed method is effective and feasible. The outcomes of this work contribute to enhancing the use of arm robot for polish free-form workpiece surfaces.