3-D vision sensor system for arc welding robot with coordinated motion by transputer system

In this paper we propose an arc welding robot system, where two robots works coordinately and employ the vision sensor. In this system one robot arm holds a welding target as a positioning device, and the other robot moves the welding torch. The vision sensor consists of two laser slit-ray projectors and one CCD TV camera, and is mounted on the top of one robot. The vision sensor detects the 3-dimensional shape of the groove on the target work which needs to be weld. And two robots are moved coordinately to trace the grooves with accuracy. In order to realize fast image processing, totally five sets of high-speed parallel processing units (Transputer) are employed. The teaching tasks of the coordinated motions are simplified considerably due to this vision sensor. Experimental results reveal the applicability of our system.