Kinematic model and calibration of a robot manipulator

In the next generation of industrial robot systems, the absolute positioning accuracy of a robot manipulator is necessary for the manipulation of robot programming systems based on a CAD model database and for integration with multiple robots and hand-eye systems. This paper identifies sources of absolute positioning error, and discusses methods of creating kinematic models and robot calibration including tool-reference-point measurements. High-precision absolute positioning is a key breakthrough required to implement robot systems that can reliably execute control programs generated by offline programming.