Path Planning of Planar Kinked Line Seam by Visual Servoing for Robotic Welding

Welding path planning can substitute for the manual teaching process of the robot and can promote the autonomous level of the robotic welding. A path planning method by visual servoing was presented, in which the optimal angle of charge-coupled device (CCD) camera was also planned. Aiming at planning two forms of kinked line seams, obtuse angle seam and right angle seam, a practicable solution was put forward. In this solution, the intersection of two adjacent straight segments is detected in each local seam image, and if intersection is found, the seam errors are calculated using the next straight segment. The experimental results show that kinked line seam can be well planned using this solution.