• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 1999

A system to extract continuously the real 3-D geometric fearture information from 2-D image of an object, which is fed randomly via conveyor has been developed. Two sets of structured laser lightings were utilized. And the laser structured light projection image was acquired using the camera from the signal of the photo-sensor mounted on the conveyor. Camera coordinate calibration matrix was obtained, which transforms 2-D image coordinate information into 3-D world space coordinate using known 6 points. The maximum error after calibration showed 1.5 mm within the height range of 103mm. The correlation equation between the shift amount of the laser light and the height was generated. Height information estimated after correlation showed the maximum error of 0.4mm within the height range of 103mm. An interactive 3-D geometric feature extracting software was developed using Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 under Windows system environment. Extracted 3-D geometric feature information was reconstructed into 3-D surface using MATLAB.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.216-220
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• 2018

In this paper, we present visual sensing techniques that can be used to teach a robot using a laser pointer. The light spot of an off-the-shelf laser pointer is detected and its movement is tracked on consecutive images of a camera. The three-dimensional position of the spot is calculated using stereo cameras. The light spot on the image is detected based on its color, brightness, and shape. The detection results in a binary image, and morphological processing steps are performed on the image to refine the detection. The movement of the laser spot is measured using two methods. The first is a simple method of specifying the region of interest (ROI) centered at the current location of the light spot and finding the spot within the ROI on the next image. It is assumed that the movement of the spot is not large on two consecutive images. The second method is using a Kalman filter, which has been widely employed in trajectory estimation problems. In our simulation study of various cases, Kalman filtering shows better results mostly. However, there is a problem of fitting the system model of the filter to the pattern of the spot movement.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1992.10b
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• pp.382-387
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• 1992

In order to obtain desired arc welding performance, we already developed an arc welding robot system that enabled coordinated motions of dual arm robots. In this system one robot arm holds a welding target as a positioning device, and the other robot moves the welding torch. Concerning to such a dual arm robot system, the positioning accuracy of robots is one important problem, since nowadays conventional industrial robots unfortunately don't have enough absolute accuracy in position. In order to cope with this problem, our robot system employed teaching playback method, where absolute error are compensated by the operator's visual feedback. Due to this system, an ideal arc welding considering the posture of the welding target and the directions of the gravity has become possible. Another problem still remains, while we developed an original teaching method of the dual arm robots with coordinated motions. The problem is that manual teaching tasks are still tedious since they need fine movements with intensive attentions. Therefore, we developed a 3-dimensional vision guided robot control method for our welding robot system with coordinated motions. In this paper we show our 3-dimensional vision sensor to guide our arc welding robot system with coordinated motions. A sensing device is compactly designed and is mounted on the tip of the arc welding robot. The sensor detects the 3-dimensional shape of groove on the target work which needs to be weld. And the welding robot is controlled to trace the grooves with accuracy. The principle of the 3-dimensional measurement is depend on the slit-ray projection method. In order to realize a slit-ray projection method, two laser slit-ray projectors and one CCD TV camera are compactly mounted. Tactful image processing enabled 3-dimensional data processing without suffering from disturbance lights. The 3-dimensional information of the target groove is combined with the rough teaching data they are given by the operator in advance. Therefore, the teaching tasks are simplified

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.301-308
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• 2016

In this study, a novel method referred as non-marker vision-based displacement measuring system(NVDMS) was introduced in order to measure the displacement of structure. There are two distinct differences between proposed NVDMS and existing vision-based displacement measuring system(VDMS). First, the NVDMS extracts the pixel coordinates of the structure using a feature point not a marker. Second, in the NVDMS, the scaling factor in order to convert the coordinates of a feature points from pixel value to physical value can be calculated by using the external conditions between the camera and the structure, which are distance, angle, and focal length, while the scaling factor for VDMS can be calculated by using the geometry of marker. The free vibration test using the three-stories scale model was conducted in order to analyze the reliability of the displacement data obtained from the NVDMS by comparing the reference data obtained from laser displacement sensor(LDS), and the measurement of dynamic characteristics was proceed using the displacement data. The NVDMS can accurately measure the dynamic displacement of the structure without the marker, and the high reliability of the dynamic characteristics obtained from the NVDMS are secured.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.71-78
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• 2007

There have been continuous efforts to automate welding processes. This automation process could be said to fall into two categories, weld seam tracking and weld quality evaluation. Recently, the attempts to achieve these two functions simultaneously are on the increase. For the study presented in this paper, a vision sensor is made, and using this, the 3 dimensional geometry of the bead is measured in real time. For the application in welding, which is the characteristic of nonlinear process, a fuzzy controller is designed. And with this, an adaptive control system is proposed which acquires the bead height and the coordinates of the point on the bead along the horizontal fillet joint, performs seam tracking with those data, and also at the same time, controls the bead geometry to a uniform shape. A communication system, which enables the communication with the industrial robot, is designed to control the bead geometry and to track the weld seam. Experiments are made with varied offset angles from the pre-taught weld path, and they showed the adaptive system works favorable results.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.116-124
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• 2005

In this paper range measurement systems are designed using an ultrasonic sensor and a camera. An ultrasonic sensor provides the range measurement to a target quickly and simply but its low resolution is a disadvantage. We tackle this problem by employing a camera. Instead using a stereoscopic sensor, which is widely used for 3D sensing but requires a computationally intensive stereo matching, the range is measured by focusing and structured lighting. In focusing a straightforward focusing measure named as MMDH(min-max difference in histogram) is proposed and compared with existing techniques. In the method of structure lighting, light stripes projected by a beam projector are used. Compared to those using a laser beam projector, the designed system can be constructed easily in a low-budget. The system equation is derived by analysing the sensor geometry. A sensing scenario using the systems designed is in two steps. First, when better accuracy is required, measurements by ultrasonic sensing and focusing of a camera are fused by MLE(maximum likelihood estimation). Second, when the target is in a range of particular interest, a range map of the target scene is obtained by using structured lighting technique. The systems designed showed measurement accuracy up to 0.3[mm] approximately in experiments.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.2162-2167
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• 2014

Robots are widely used in various automation processes in industrial applications. Traditionally, it operated under fixed condition by teaching operating positions. Recently, diverse 2D/3D sensors are used together with robot to give more flexibility in operation. In this paper, we deal with automatic manipulation of tie rod in automotive production line. Sensor system consisted of a camera and slit laser is used for the acquisition of 3D information and it is used attached on the robot. Nut runner is used for the manipulation of stop nut and adjust bolt on the tie rod. Detailed procedures for the automatic manipulation of tie rod are presented. In the presented approach, we effectively use 3D information in whole procedure such as computing distance to the tie rod, rotation angle of bolt and nut. Experimental results show the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.

• 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.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.283-291
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• 2013

Methods for measuring or estimating of ground shape by a laser range finder and a vision sensor(exteroceptive sensors) have critical weakness in terms that these methods need prior database built to distinguish acquired data as unique surface condition for driving. Also, ground information by exteroceptive sensors does not reflect the deflection of ground surface caused by the movement of UGVs. Thereby, UGVs have some difficulties regarding to finding optimal driving conditions for maximum maneuverability. Therefore, this paper proposes a method of recognizing exact and precise ground shape using Inertial Measurement Unit(IMU) as a proprioceptive sensor. In this paper, firstly this method recognizes attitude of a robot in real-time using IMU and compensates attitude data of a robot with angle errors through analysis of vehicle dynamics. This method is verified by outdoor driving experiments of a real mobile robot.