Simulation and verification of belt grinding with industrial robots

A new simulation and verification system of belt grinding with industrial robots is presented in this paper. The workpiece surface is represented by a discrete height field, an array of extended height segments, and a fast collision detection algorithm using k-DOP bounding volumes is adopted to accelerate the localization of the contact area. A local grinding model is incorporated to decide the real material removal. Unlike the usual global linear model, it determines the removed material in the contact area based on the acting force distribution and some other grinding parameters. With this new system, robot programmers can improve the path planning by visualizing the manufacturing process, predicting potential problems and measuring dimensional errors. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All fights reserved.