Abstract
Workers have been replaced by mobile manipulators for factory automation in recent years. One of the typical tasks for automation is that a mobile manipulator moves to a target location and picks and places an object on the worktable. However, due to the pose estimation error of the mobile platform, the robot cannot reach the exact target position, which prevents the manipulator from being able to accurately pick and place the object on the worktable. In this study, we developed an automatic alignment system using a low-cost camera mounted on the end-effector of a collaborative robot. Camera calibration and pose estimation methods were also proposed for the automatic alignment system. This algorithm uses a markerboard composed of markers to calibrate the camera and then precisely estimate the camera pose. Experimental results demonstrate that the mobile manipulator can perform successful pick and place tasks on various conditions.