A study on Development of Footwear Shape Scanner for Off-Line Robot Path Programming

We need a lot of manpower and we can cut down a labor cost by applying industrial robots the footwear bonding automation process. In this study, we suggest how to program off-line robot path along a shoe's outsole shape in the footwear bonding process by 5-axis microscribe system like robot arms. This microscribe system development consists 5-axis microscribe mechanics, signal processing circuit, and PC with software. It is the system for making database of a shoe's outsole through the movement of a microscribe with many joints. To do this, first read 5-encoders' pulse values while a robot arm points a shoe's outsole shape from the initial status. Then, calculate a relative shoe's outsole by Denavit-Hatenberg's (D-H) direct Kinematics of known length of links and coordinate values. Next, calculate the encoders' pulse values of the robot arm's rotation and transmitting the angle pulse values to the PC through a circuit. Finally, it is able to display a shoe's outsole at real-time by computing the Denvavit-Hantenberg's (D-H) direct kinematics in the PC. With the coordinate values calculated above, we can draw a bonding gauge-line on the upper. Also, we can make off-line robot path programming compute a shoe's bonding area on the upper. These results will be effectively applied for programming a robot path on off-line and automatically.