• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.314-319
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• 2002

The Automation and Control Group at the University of Brasilia is developing an automatic welding station based on an industrial robot and a controllable welding machine. Several techniques were applied in order to improve the quality of the welding joints. This paper deals with the implementation of a laser-based computer vision system to guide the robotic manipulator during the welding process. Currently the robot is taught to follow a prescribed trajectory which is recorded a repeated over and over relying on the repeatability specification from the robot manufacturer. The objective of the computer vision system is monitoring the actual trajectory followed by the welding torch and to evaluate deviations from the desired trajectory. The position errors then being transfer to a control algorithm in order to actuate the robotic manipulator and cancel the trajectory errors. The computer vision systems consists of a CCD camera attached to the welding torch, a laser emitting diode circuit, a PC computer-based frame grabber card, and a computer vision algorithm. The laser circuit establishes a sharp luminous reference line which images are captured through the video camera. The raw image data is then digitized and stored in the frame grabber card for further processing using specifically written algorithms. These image-processing algorithms give the actual welding path, the relative position between the pieces and the required corrections. Two case studies are considered: the first is the joining of two flat metal pieces; and the second is concerned with joining a cylindrical-shape piece to a flat surface. An implementation of this computer vision system using parallel computer processing is being studied.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.68-80
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• 1996

When a workpiece is to be arc welded around the outside corner, continuous welding without welding seam in the neighborhood of comer still remains a very difficult technique. Skilled welders weld comers by delicate“hand-eye coordination”while turning the workpiece manually, However, there is not a very clear solution to this problem in robotized arc welding process. In order to solve this problem, the coordination of a robot and a positioner with one or two axes is necessary. This paper presents a method of continuous welding around the corner of workpiece using the coordinated motion of a robot and a positioner. The positioner is either revolute jointed or prismatic jointed. In this paper, a clothoid curve is chosen for welding trajectory. The clothoid curve is excellent in connecting straight and curved weld-lines with good continuity and accommodates various welding conditions. By using this welding trajectory, the deceleration, which leads to widening of the melt and the heat affected zone, at comer area is reduced with strategic rotation of robot torch in coordination with a positioner providing smooth transition of welding torch orientation. Two types of special clothoid curves are developed for different weld slope conditions. These clothoid curves are applied to the case of linear and rotary Positioners at arc welding robot work-cell.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.113-118
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• 2004

In this paper, we propose a new weaving trajectory algorithm for the arc welding of a articulated manipulator. The algorithm uses the theory of Bezier spline. We make a comparison between the conventional algorithms using Catmull-Rom curve and the new algorithms using Bezier spline. The proposed algorithm has been evaluated based on the MATLAB environment in order to illustrate its good performance. Through simulations, the proposed algorithm can result in high-speed and flexible weaving trajectory planning so that it's trajectory cannot penetrate into a base metal compared to the conventional algorithm using Catmull-Rom curve.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.59-66
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• 2008

Recently, automobile parts progress with modularization, which a great many allied products are modularized. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develope modular housing for modularization of steering gear. Generally, steering gear housing is composed of valve housing and rack housing, it is important to combine two housings. However, housing having the pipe shape is very sensitive to welding distortion, and welding trajectory is very complicated. In order to solve this subject, cooperative control by using robots was constructed. Further, we developed the dedicated system to suit modular housing based on it, and applied laser welding to there. Moreover, welding speed was controlled in the rapid curve section so that the defect in trajectory of housing was reduced to obtain sound weldment. Accordingly, produced housing by this way is presented enough withstanding pressure to $100kg/cm^2$, and roundness and straightness are measured about 10/100 and 0.9/100 respectively.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.99-106
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• 1996

Development of an automatic TIG welding system incorporating a vision sensor and torch control mechanism leads to an improved welding quality and greater production efficiency. The automatic welding system should be greatly restricted in its size and weight for the LNG(Liquefied Natural Gas) storage tank and also provide a unique torch rotating mechanism which keeps the torch tip in the constant position while the angle is changed continuously to maintain the welding torch substantially perpendicular to the weld line. The developed system is driven by two translation axes X, Z and one rotational axis. A moving line window method is adopted to the image recognition of the corrugated membranes with specular reflection. This method decides original laser stripe patterns in image which is affected by multi-reflection. A self-teaching algorithm, which guides the automatic welding machine with the information provided by the CCD camera without any previous learning of a reference trajectory, was developed for tracking the corrugated membrane of the LNG tank along the weld line.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.756-767
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• 2005

This paper presents a decentralized motion control method of welding mobile manipulators which use for welding in many industrial fields. Major requirements of welding robots are accuracy, robust, and reliability so that they can substitute for the welders in hazardous and worse environment. To do this, the manipulator has to take the torch tracking along a welding trajectory with a constant velocity and a constant heading angle, and the mobile-platform has to move to avoid the singularities of the manipulator. In this paper, we develop a kinematic model of the mobile-platform and the manipulator as two separate subsystems. With the idea that the manipulator can avoid the singularities by keeping its initial configuration in the welding process, the redundancy problem of system is solved by introducing the platform mobility to realize this idea. Two controllers for the mobile-platform and the manipulator were designed, respectively, and the relationships between two controllers are the velocities of two subsystems. Control laws are obtained based on the Lyapunov function to ensure the asymptotical stability of the system. The simulation and experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1992.10a
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• pp.797-800
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• 1992

Much experience and knowledge is needed in welding because there are many working parameters and quantitative description is difficult. Therefore, introduction of expert system based on such data base has been required. In this study, welding heat and shape of bead was controlled by fuzzy inference with the welding condition, position error and voltage and current error of robot. For this, torch trajectory of robot was generated by modeling the working data with CAD and then welding was carried out through down loading to robot. And working error was controlled by on-line communication.

• International Journal of Korean Welding Society
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2001

A weld quality assessment method is proposed in this work, which can be applied to the short-circuit mode in GMAW. Information about the welding signal trajectory, distribution of the signal duration at each sub-regions and short-circuit frequency is used to evaluate the weld quality. The weighted penalty, which is determined experimentally, is imposed for each abnormal signal. Performance of the proposed method is compared with the Simpson's method under the conditions of shielding gas reduction, workpiece surface contamination and joint gap in the butt and fillet welds. Although the proposed method predicts the weld quality with reasonable accuracy, further modification and extension to other metal transfer modes are needed as a further study.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.270-275
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• 1993

In this paper, the arc welding robot controller using a touch sensor and a arc sensor is presented. The controller is composed of robot controller parts for moving torch, and arc welding controller for welding and tracking. In the controller, an compensated data is generated to control robot trajectory and seam tracking by the arc sensor function. The data is obtained by integration of arc current. Experimental results are presented confirming the controller performance.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 1996.05a
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• pp.96-98
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• 1996

Welding of corner area across the edge is a difficult problem in robotized arc welding system, especially when continuously-welded leakage-proof product is required. This paper presents the methodology of cooperation plan of an arc welding robot and 1 or 2 axis welding manipulators for corner area welding. Welding trajectory for the robot is generated using clothoid curves; symmetrical double clothoid curve or unsymmetrical clothoid curve depending on the nature of the workpiece. The clothoid curve is first formulated for the case of linear type positioning table and then applied to the case of rotary type manipulator. The methodology is then illustrated for practical downhand welding situations.