A point and distance constraint based 6R robot calibration method through machine vision

This paper proposes a 6R robot closed-loop kinematic calibration method to improve absolute position accuracy with point and distance constraints though machine vision. In the calibration process, a camera attached to the mounting plate of the robot is used to capture a fixed reference sphere as a point constraint and to record robot joint angles and gauge block lengths that are used as a distance constraint. A first-order difference quotient is used to calculate the Jacobian matrix in the joint parameter identification process. The Stailbli TX60 robot is successfully calibrated using the proposed method. After calibration, the average distance error of robot motion is decreased from 2.05 mm to 0.24 mm.