An Automatic Teaching Method by Vision Information for A Robotic Assembly System

In this study, an off-line automatic teaching method using vision information for robotic assembly task is proposed. Many of industrial robots are still taught and programmed by a teaching pendant. The robot is guided by a human operator to the desired application locations. These motions are recorded and are later edited, within the robotic language using in the robot controller, and played back repetitively to perform the robot task. This conventional teaching method is time-consuming and somewhat dangerous. In the proposed method, the operator teaches the desired locations on the image acquired through CCD camera mounted on the robot hand. The robotic language program is automatically generated and transferred to the robot controller. This teaching process is implemented through an off-line programming(OLP) software. The OLP is developed for the robotic assembly system used in this study. In order to transform the location on image coordinates into robot coordinates, a calibration process is established. The proposed teaching method is implemented and evaluated on the assembly system for soldering electronic parts on a circuit board. A six-axis articulated robot executes assembly task according to the off-line automatic teaching.