Acquisition of weld seam dimensional position information for arc welding robot based on vision computing

Recognition and identification of weld environment and seam dimensional position by computer vision is a key technology for developing advanced autonomous welding robot. Aiming at requirements for recognition of weld seam image characteristics, this paper first presents an improved algorithm of subpixel edge detection based on Zernike moments. Comparing with the Ghosal's original algorithm, the improved algorithm deals with mask effect and first derivative model on edge gradient direction so that it has the strong robust to noise, self-thinning ability and higher locating precision. An algorithm based on ZMs to extract line is also proposed, the comparative results with SHT and RHT show the method has the highest calculation speed and accuracy. The stereovision technology is developed to identify dimensional position of weld seam by computing dimensional coordinates of the weld seam. According to characteristics of weld seam, view field scope model and stereovision model based on baseline are studied and a stereo matching method is presented. In order to evaluate the algorithms and models presented in this paper, a welding robot systems with single camera fixed on the weld torch end-effector has been established for the robot to identify the dimensional position of typical weld seam by one-item and two-position method. The experiment results on S-shape and saddle-shape weld seams show that the vision computing method developed in this paper can be used for acquiring weld seam dimensional position information in welding robot system. Thus the welding path is mapped before the welding operation is executed.