Automatic precision robot assembly system with microscopic vision and force sensor

Abstract

An automatic precision robot assembly system is established. The robot assembly system mainly consists of an industrial robot, three cameras, a micro force sensor, and a specific gripper. The industrial robot is a six-axis serial manipulator, which is used to conduct grasping and assembly subtasks. Two microscopic cameras are fixed on two high accuracy translational platforms to provide visual information in aligning stage for assembly. While one conventional camera is installed on the robotic end effector to guide the gripper to grasp component. The micro force sensor is installed on the robotic end effector to perceive the contacted forces in inserting stage. According to the characteristics of components, an adsorptive gripper is designed to pick up components. In addition, a three-stage “aligning–approaching–grasping” control strategy for grasping subtask and a two-stage “aligning–inserting” control strategy for assembly subtask are proposed. Position offset compensation is computed and introduced into aligning stage for assembly to make the grasped component in the microscopic cameras’ small field of view. Finally, based on the established robot assembly system and the proposed control strategies, the assembly tasks including grasping and assembly are carried out automatically. With 30 grasping experiments, the success rate is 100%. Besides, the position and orientation alignment errors of pose alignment for assembly are less than 20 μm and 0.1°.