Grinding robot system for car brazing bead

In this paper, design of an automatic grinding robot system for car brazing bead is introduced. Car roof and side panels are joined using brazing, and then the brazing bead is processed so that the bead is invisible after painting. Up to now the grinding process is accomplished manually. The difficulties in automation of the grinding process are induced by variation of position and shape of the bead and non-uniformity of the grinding area due to surface deformation. For each car, the grinding area including the brazing bead is sensed and then modeled using a 2-D optical sensor system. Using these model data, the position and the direction of discrete points on the car, body surface are obtained to produce grinding path for a 6 degrees of freedom grinding robot. During the process, it is necessary to sense the reaction forces continuously to prepare for the unexpected circumstances. In addition, to meet the line cycle time it is necessary to reduce the required time in sensing, signal processing, modeling, path planning and data transfer by utilizing real-time communication of the information. The key technique in the communication and integration of the complex information is obtaining in-field reliability. This automatic grinding robot system may be regarded as a jump in the intelligent robot processing technique.