• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.64-74
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• 2007

Because of the size and environment in the shipbuilding process, the portable type robot is required for the automatic seam tracking. For this reason, the structure of laser sensor should be considered in the initial design step and the coordinate transformation between welding robot and laser sensor, which is joint finder, must be identified exactly and the real time tracking algorithm based on these consideration could be developed. In this research, laser displacement sensor in which its structure is laser beam's vertical projection, is developed to recognize the location of weld joint. In practical applications, however, images of weld joints are often degraded because of the surface specularity or spatter. To overcome the problem, the constrained joint finding algorithm is proposed. In the approach of coordinate conversion rule for the visual feedback control among welding torch, robot body and laser sensor is applied by the same reference point method. In the real time seam tracking algorithms we propose constrained sampling method which uses look ahead distance. The RLS(Recursive Least Square) filter is applied to obtain the smooth tracking path from the sensitive edge data. From the experimental results, we could see the possibility that the developed laser sensor with proposed processing algorithm and real time seam tracking method can be used as a welding under the shipbuilding condition.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.460-464
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• 2001

Recently, the use of Robot increase little by little for the purpose of developing a welding quality and productivity in the arc welding part. It is more important to contact the seam for arc welding before moving a welding robot. There are two types of method to contact the seam namely contact and noncontact type largely In this paper, image processing sensor(a kind of non-contact sensor) is concerned to track the seam by using laser diode and CCD camera. A structured laser diode's light illuminated on the weld groove and the reflected shape is introduced by CCD camera. The image board captures this image and software analyzes this image. The robot is moved and welded exactly as acquired image X-Y data is changed with robot's X-Y value. Also, most of seam tracking are considered by changing the program simply in case of the different weld prove of plane surface.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2016

The Gas Metal Arc(GMA) welding, called Metal Inert Gas(MIG) welding, has been an important component in manufacturing industries. A key technology for robotic welding processes is seam tracking system, which is critical to improve the welding quality and welding capacities. The objectives of this study were to develop the intelligent and cost-effective algorithms for image processing in GMA welding which based on the laser vision sensor. Welding images were captured from the CCD camera and then processed by the proposed algorithm to track the weld joint location. The proposed algorithms that commonly used at the present stage were verified and compared to obtain the optimal one for each step in image processing. Finally, validity of the proposed algorithms was examined by using weld seam images obtained with different welding environments for image processing. The results proved that the proposed algorithm was quite excellent in getting rid of the variable noises to extract the feature points and centerline for seam tracking in GMA welding and could be employed for general industrial application.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.12 no.2 s.25
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• pp.151-155
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• 2006

In these days, welding is the most commonly used metallic connection technology and also is the fundamental production technology of the modem industrial, which is used in various areas of the industrial fields, such as shipbuilding, automobiles, airplanes and plant facilities. However welding process produces strong light, electric currents, and fume gases etc., and the welding automation is not so easy compared to the other works of manufacturing industries which produce the standardized products in large quantities. So it is difficult to weld and detect the all kinds of seams automatically by a specific sensor. In this paper the sensor applying strain gauges is used to detect the seams of triangular wave form. With the auto carriage having the sensor we proposed the experiment to weld and track the seam automatically.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.18-20
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• 2003

Optimal processing and system to produce the laser welded tube for one body formed bumper beam are studied. The calculated size of tube is a thickness of 1.4mm, diameter of 105.4mm and length of 2000mm. The tube is shaped from cool rolled high strength steel sheet(tensile strength: 60kgf/$\textrm{mm}^2$ grade). Two roll bending method is the optimal tube shaping process compared to UO-bending, bending on press brake, multi-step continuous roll forming and 3 roll bending methods. Weld quality monitoring and seam tracking along the butt-joint lengthwise to the tube axis are also studied. The longitudinal butt-joint is welded by the $CO_2$ laser welding system equipped with a seam tracker and plasma sensor. The constructed $CO_2$ laser tube welding system can be used for the precision seam tracking and the real-time monitoring of weld quality. Finally, the obtained laser welded tube can be used for one-body formed automobile bumper beam.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.58-69
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• 1990

In conventional arc welding, position error of the weld torch with respect to the weld seam and variation of groove dimension are induced by inaccurate fitup and fixturing. In this study, a vision system has been developed to recognize and compensate the position error and dimensional inaccuracy. The system uses a structured laser light illuminated on the weld groove and perceived by a C.C.D camera. A new algorithm to detect the edge of the reflected laser light is introduced for real time processing. The developed system was applied to arbitarary weld paths with various types of joint in arc welding process. The experimental results show that the proposed system can detect the weld groove parameters within good accuracy and yield good tracking performance.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.775-778
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• 1996

In this research, the robustness of a seam tracking for the automatic welding system is studied. The laser displacement sensor is used as a seam finder. X-Y moving table drived by ac servo motor controls the position and velocity of the torch-and-sensor part. However, dc servo motor is used to control the position and velocity of the torch. The sensor locates ahead of torch to preview the weld line, and brings about the inaccuracy on the torch tracking. To enhance the robustness on this system against the influence of disturbances and model uncertainty, H$\_$.inf./ control is applied to the angular motion of torch. The simulation shows that the tracking accuracy improved significantly. Also, experimental results give a good performance of H$\_$.inf./ control strategy to the automatic seam tracking system for the welding.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.538-543
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• 2002

M/S TB(Mash Seam Tailored Blank) is a production method for blanks by welding together blanks of different material, thickness and coating, and is an attractive method for manufacturing car body because it makes parts lighter and can save the cost and time to manufacture. However, there have not been quantified criteria to evaluate the quality of TB weld. This study introduced FHR (failure height ratio) in order to assess formability or/and weldability of the M/S welds and the applicability of FHR was confirmed by actual auto body forming and FLD tests. Furthermore, a new parameter, HN(heat number) based on the heat input of "$Q=I^2Rt$" was proposed and assessed. It was found that the concept of HN could be utilized to evaluate the soundness of M/S welds without any destructive tests.ive tests.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.14-23
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• 2007

Welding fabrication invariantly involves three district sequential steps: preparation, actual process execution and post-weld inspection. One of the major problems in automating these steps and developing autonomous welding system is the lack of proper sensing strategies. Conventionally, machine vision is used in robotic arc welding only for the correction of pre-taught welding paths in single pass. However, in this paper, multipass tracking more than single pass tracking is performed by conventional seam tracking algorithm and developed one. And tracking performances of two algorithm are compared in multipass tracking. As the result, tracking performance in multi-pass welding shows superior conventional seam tracking algorithm to developed one.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.885-893
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• 2000

The use of neural-fuzzy system to model mesh seam welding is described in this paper. Conventional, automated process generally involves sophisticated sensing and control techniques applied to various processing parameters. Welding parameters affecting quality include the arc voltage, the welding current, torch travel speed and the pressure and so on. The relationship between the welding parameters and weld quality is not a direct one, and in addition, the effect of the weld parameter variables are not independent of the each other. The effectiveness of the proposed neuro-fuzzy algorithms is demonstrated by computer simulations.