Intelligent Static Calibration of Industrial Robots using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Khanesar, M. A.; Yan, Minrui; Kendal, Peter; Isa, Mohammad; Piano, Samanta; Branson, David

Abstract

This paper proposes an industrial robot calibration methodology using an artificial bee colony algorithm. Open loop industrial robot positions are usually calculated using joint angle readings and industrial robot forward kinematics, where feedback control systems are then use iteratively to improve performance. This can often be time consuming and risks unstable control, so the preference is to enable as accurate open loop control as possible. Industrial robot forward kinematics include Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) parameters. However, assembly and manufacturing tolerances may result in differences between actual and nominal DH parameters. To improve industrial robot positional accuracies, it is required to better estimate its DH parameters. A highly accurate laser tracker system provides the positional measurement required to perform calibration of the DH parameters. For this purpose, a Leica AT960-MR, a laser tracker which works based on interferometry principles, is used to provide end effector 3D position measurements. An artificial Bee colony algorithm is then used to improve the cost function associated with the forward kinematic error by estimating more accurate industrial robot DH parameters. The implementation results demonstrate that using calibrated industrial robot DH parameters, it is possible to improve the open loop positional accuracies of the robot compared to uncalibrated forward kinematics mean absolute error for test data from 75.4 μm to 60.1 μm (20.3% improvement).

Citation

Khanesar, M. A., Yan, M., Kendal, P., Isa, M., Piano, S., & Branson, D. (2023). Intelligent Static Calibration of Industrial Robots using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics ( IEEE ICM 2023). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICM54990.2023.10101918

• Conference Name: Proceedings - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics, ICM 2023
• Conference Location: Loughborough, United Kingdom
• Start Date: Mar 15, 2023
• End Date: Mar 17, 2023
• Acceptance Date: Jan 12, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Apr 17, 2023
• Publication Date: Apr 17, 2023
• Deposit Date: Feb 1, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 17, 2023
• Series Title: IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics
• Book Title: Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics ( IEEE ICM 2023)
• ISBN: 9781665466622
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICM54990.2023.10101918
• Keywords: Three-dimensional displays , Mechatronics , Service robots , Measurement by laser beam , Kinematics , Position measurement , Open loop systems , Industrial robot calibration , laser tracker system , intelligent optimization , artificial bee colony
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/16795459
• Publisher URL: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10101918
• Related Public URLs: https://iten.ieee-ies.org/events/2022/2023-icm-ieee-international-conference-on-mechatronics/