Application Research of Vision-Guided Grinding Robot for Wheel Hub Castings

The combination of vision and robotic grinding technology provides robots with “visual perception” capabilities that enable them to accurately locate the area to be ground and perform the grinding tasks efficiently. Based on the rough grinding requirements for wheel hub burrs proposed by a casting company, this paper investigates the application of a vision-guided grinding robot in treating burrs on wheel hub castings. First, through vision system calibration, the conversion from pixel coordinate system to robot base coordinate system is implemented, thus ensuring that the subsequently extracted burr point coordinates can be correctly mapped to the robot’s operational coordinate system. Next, the images of the burrs on wheel hub castings are collected and processed. All the burr points are extracted by applying image algorithms. In order to improve grinding accuracy, a height error compensation model is established to adjust the coordinates of the 2D-pixel points; the coordinate error after compensation was reduced by 58.33%. Subsequently, the compensated burr point trajectories are optimized by utilizing an intelligent optimization algorithm to generate the shortest grinding path. Through experimental analysis of the relationship between spindle speed and surface roughness, a grinding trajectory simulation model is constructed, and the simulation results are integrated into the robot system. Finally, actual wheel hub burr grinding experiments are performed to validate the effectiveness and practicality of the proposed solution.