Industrial camera model positioned on an effector for automated tool center point calibration

Abstract

The study presents a novel, full model of an industrial camera suitable for robotic manipulator tool center point (TCP) calibration. The authors propose a new solution which employs a full camera model positioned on the effector of an industrial robotic arm. The proposed full camera model simulates the capture of a calibration pattern for use in automated TCP calibration. The study describes an experimental test robot stand for producing a reference data set, a full camera model, the parameters of a generally known camera obscura model, and a comparison of proposed solution with the camera obscura model. The results are discussed in the context of an innovative approach which features a full camera model to assist the TCP calibration process. The results showed that the full camera model produced greater accuracy, a significant benefit not provided by other state-of-the-art methods. In several cases, the absolute error produced was up to seven times lower than with the state-of-the-art camera obscura model. The error for small rotation (max. of 5$$^\circ $$ ∘ ) and small translation (max. of 20 mm) was 3.65 pixels. The results also highlighted the applicability of the proposed solution in real-life industrial processes.