Integration of vision and robot motion: A novel approach to teaching kinematics transformation using an industrial robot arm

The paper reports on work carried out on an educational exercise for graduate and undergraduate students that aids the study of Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) programming, through a real application within a 'learning by doing' scheme. The work presented to students requires the integration of the motion of an industrial robot (ASEA IRB 6) with a camera vision system (Baxall CD9752); they are asked to develop software that will support: the motion of the robot arm, including forward and reverse kinematics; the detection of an object on a test table; the picking up of the object; and its move to a target position on another test table. To assess the experiment, students select seven random points in the active camera area to determine the difference between the actual location of the end-effector and the location calculated using two methods: the trigonometric solutions and the DH parameters. Students discover that the trigonometric technique gives better position accuracy than DH. The project forms an excellent practical exercise to enhance student learning.