On the detection of weld line and automatic seam tracking by a welding robot with a visual sensor in lap welding of thin aluminum plates

In order to perform automatic welding of thin aluminum plates, a Cartesian-coordinates welding robot with a visual sensor was constructed. Especially, lighting method and a new data processing method were proposed to detect and track automatically a weld line of lap joint of thin aluminum plates. Moreover, a new tracking system (CMVC method), by which more precise tracking can be performed and the robustness of the automatic tracking system of weld line is improved remarkably, was proposed. As the result of the experiments of seam tracking and welding, the effectiveness of the system constructed was confirmed.