A New Full Pose Measurement Method for Robot Calibration

Identification of robot kinematic errors during the calibration process often requires accurate full pose measurements (position and orientation) of robot end-effectors in Cartesian space. This paper proposes a new method of full pose measurement of robot end-effectors for calibration. This method is based on an analysis of the features of a set of target points (placed on a rotating end-effector) on a circular trajectory. The accurate measurement is validated by computational simulation results from the Puma robot. Moreover, experimental calibration and validation results for the Hyundai HA-06 robot prove the effectiveness, correctness, and reliability of the proposed method. This method can be applied to robots that have entirely revolute joints or to robots for which only the last joint is revolute.