Vision-Based Seam Tracking in Robotic Welding: A Review of Recent Research

Robotic welding is widely used in industrial automation, and weld seam tracking is key to the robotic welding and needs to be solved urgently. Because of high precision and adaptability, vision-based seam tracking has become the most widely used technology in weld seam tracking. Researches on vision-based seam tracking have been conducted by many scholars and progressive results have been obtained. Aimed at key problems of seam tracking, this paper summarizes the relevant research work in recent years, especially the application of active vision and passive vision. This paper focuses on the advantages and defects of these two typical methods and discusses recent outstanding progress on seam tracking techniques. In addition, the possibility of the composite vision method of active vision and passive vision in tracking is also discussed, and development directions of intelligent weld seam tracking technology are prospected.