A novel TCF calibration method for robotic visual measurement system

An accurate TCF (tool control frame) model is essential for high-accuracy robot off-line programming. Meanwhile, TCF calibration is an important procedure for production recovery after robot collides in industrial field. This article proposes a novel TCF calibration method in robotic visual measurement system in which the robot TCF is defined based on the model of visual sensor and a standard sphere with known diameter is utilized as the calibration target. With the translational and rotational movements of the industrial robot, the visual senor measures the center of standard sphere from multiple different robot postures, TCF orientation and TCP position are determined in two steps. Robot off-line programming is performed based on the TCF calibration result, and robot collision is simulated on an ABB IRB2400 industrial robot. Experimental results have validated the effectiveness and efficiency of the standard sphere-based TCF calibration method, which could control the deviation of an identical featured point within 0.5 mm measured before and after collision recovery.