Kinematic Calibration for Articulated Arm Coordinate Measuring Machines Base on Particle Swarm Optimization

Kinematic calibration is one of the most important ways to improve the accuracy of articulated arm coordinate measuring machines (AACMMs). The kinematic model of six degree of freedom (6-DOF) AACMMs was built by Denavit-Hartenberg method. One calibration method base on particle swarm optimization (PSO) was presented, which used single-point repeatability as the fitness function and kinematic parameters as the position vector. An adaptive inertia weight was presented to improve the ability of global exploration and local exploitation of the PSO. A 6-DOF AACMM was used to carry out experimental tests in order to evaluate the efficiency of the calibration method. The results show that after calibration the accuracy of the AACMM is improved greatly.