Local POE model for robot kinematic calibration

A robot kinematic calibration method based on the local frame representation of the product-of-exponentials (Local POE) formula is introduced. In this method, the twist coordinates of the joint axes are expressed in their respective local (body) frames. The advantages of this new approach are threefolds: (1) revolute and prismatic joints can be uniformly expressed in the twist coordinates based on the line geometry; (2) the twist coordinates of the joint axes can be set up with simple values because the local frames can be arbitrarily defined on the links; (3) the kinematic parameters described by the twist coordinates vary smoothly that makes the method robust and singularity-free. By assuming that the kinematic errors exist only in the relative initial poses of the consecutive link frames, the kinematic calibration models can be formulated in a simple and elegant way. The calibration process then becomes to re-define a set of new local link frames that are able to reflect the actual kinematics of the robot. This method can be applied to robot manipulators with generic open chain structures (serial or tree-typed). The simulation and experiment results on a 4-DOF SCARA type robot and a 5-DOF tree-typed modular robot have shown that the average positioning accuracy of the end-effector increases significantly after calibration. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.