• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.760-766
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• 2014

This paper represents a portable robot for use in the welding process of the double hulls in shipbuilding yards. It has 5 degrees of freedom and 3kg of payload. Its body weight is 17.3 [kg] so that human workers can carry it by hand to the work place. Its body is mainly made of magnesium and aluminum alloys. Since the robot is placed about 25m apart from its controller, EtherCAT is adopted for reliable connection between the robot and controller through a single light cable. RTX real-time kernel and KPA EtherCAT master are used to control the robot on a Windows XP environment. The performance of the developed robot is satisfactory to the requirement in welding tasks of U-type cells in shipbuilding yards.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.8 no.9
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• pp.776-787
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• 2002

Automation of welding process in shipyards is ultimately necessary, since the welding site is spatially enclosed by floors and girders, and therefore welding operators are exposed to hostile working conditions. To solve this problem, a welding mobile robot that can navigate autonomously within the enclosure has been developed. To achieve the welding task in the closed space, the robotic welding system needs a sensor system for the working environment recognition and the weld seam tracking, and a specially designed environment recognition strategy. In this paper, a three-dimensional laser vision system is developed based on the optical triangulation technology in order to provide robots with 3D work environmental map. Using this sensor system, a spatial filter based on neural network technology is designed for extracting the center of laser stripe, and evaluated in various situations. An environment modeling algorithm structure is proposed and tested, which is composed of the laser scanning module for 3D voxel modeling and the plane reconstruction module for mobile robot localization. Finally, an environmental recognition strategy for welding mobile robot is developed in order to recognize the work environments efficiently. The design of the sensor system, the algorithm for sensing the partially structured environment with plane segments, and the recognition strategy and tactics for sensing the work environment are described and discussed with a series of experiments in detail.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.63-65
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• 2005

Because of simple principal and low cost, resistance spot welding has been used a lot for joining the sheet metal in automotive manufacturing process. Welding current, welding time, and force are the most important variables in resistance spot wording. Air guns have hem still used widely. The requirement of synchronizing between robot and weld-gun has become bigger as the field has been automated. The number of servo-gun in the field is trending upward because there're advantages as like to synchronize with robot and to control the stroke path and force by programming on servo-gun system. But no cleared force control method is suggested on servo-gun system until now. In this study, we proved the feedback current of the servo-motor can be used to an excellent force measuring sensor and the force is controlled by the feedback current. And we also detected force lowering during welding cycle on the servo-gun system and solved by compensated force control.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.179-183
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• 1997

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.96-105
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• 1996

Robot systems are widely utilized in the shipbuilding industry to enhance the productivity by automating the welding process. In order to increase productivity, it is necessary to reduce the time used for robot teaching. In this work, the automatic teaching system is developed for the subassembly process in the shipbuilding industry. A alser/vision sensor is designed to detect the weld seam and the image of the fillet joint is processed using the arm method. Positions of weld seams defined in the CAD database are transformed into the robot coordinate, and the dynamic programming technique is applied to find the sub-optimum weld path. Experiments are carried out to verify the system performance. The results show that the proposed automatic teaching system performs successfully and can be applied to the robot system in the subassembly process.

• Laser Solutions
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2009

Because of its fast and precise welding performance, laser welding is becoming a new excellent welding method. However, the precise focusing and robust seam tracking are required to apply laser welding to the practical fields. In order to laser weld a type of T joint like a circular pipe on a square pipe, which could be met in the three dimensional structure such as an aluminum space frame, a visual sensor system was developed for automation of focusing and seam tracking. The developed sensor system consists of a digital CCD camera, a structured laser, and a vision processor. It is moved and positioned by a 2-axis motorized stage, which is attached to a 6 axis robot manipulator with a laser welding head. After stripe-type structured laser illuminates a target surface, images are captured through the digital CCD camera. From the image, seam error and defocusing error are calculated using image processing algorithms which includes efficient techniques handling continuously changed image patterns. These errors are corrected by the stage off-line during welding or teaching. Laser welding of a circular pipe on a square pipe was successful with the vision tracking system by reducing the path positioning and de focusing errors due to the robot teaching or a geometrical variation of specimens and jig holding.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.223-228
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• 2007

This paper investigated on mechanical characteristic of Al alloy for ship's welded with various welding techniques such as TIG, MIG welding and welding by robot. The yield strength, tensile strength and elongation in TIG welding present 83.9%, 64.6% and 21.9% compare to those in base metal, respectively. The MIG welding is carried out with welding eletrode of ER5183 and ER5356. The mechanical characteristics in ER5356 are improved at approximately 2-4% for ER5183. The mechanical properties of 5083O in welding by robot are better than those of 5456-H116.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.55-61
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• 2009

This study aims for determination of cutting work envelope of an articular robot for H-beam cutting. The robot has its own work envelope. The cutting of piece with groove requires the specific position of the torch which contracts the work envelope. This study suggested the new method to determine the cutting work envelope for this case. The method simplified the problem by use of the combination of inverse kinematics and forward kinematics. The method was used for cutting the H-beam with groove. The cutting work envelope was determined easily. The result was verified by 3D simulation system which implements the articular robot with 6 axes and the H-beam in the virtual shop.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.27 no.10
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• pp.24-33
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• 1990

Since a number of welding points are distributed in an automobile part, the number of welding points alloted to each robot are large. So, there is an increasing need of an optimal sequence planning to minimize the total welding time. In this paper, an off-line programming scheme for effective teaching of a spot welding robot is presented. A collision free, optimal welding sequence planning is done through applying the modified Traveling Salesman Problem algorithm. Also, a data extraction method from an existing general CAD system is presented for reuse of the existing exact model data produced by a model designer and easy constructing the world model data base. The result show that the proposed system could enhance the efficiency of spot welding robot in automobile industry.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 1998.03a
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• pp.274-280
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• 1998

The welding technology and qualities are developed significantly, in recent years, in the use of automated processing technology and welding robot systems. But these automated welding technologies have many difficulties for finding the optimal welding parameter conditions. Because of the lack of mathematical model for determination of optimal welding process parameters. In this study, the sensitivity analysis of the empirical equations for finding weld bead width, height and penetration depth by using the published formulae. The selected major welding process parameters effected to weld bead geometries are the welding speed, current, voltage and weld wire diameter.