Robot kinematic calibration with plane constraints based on POE formula

Utilizing plane constraints, a linear kinematic calibration algorithm is proposed for industrial robots based on local frame representation of the POE (Product-of-Exponential) formula. Different from conventional calibration methods which need expensive measurement equipment, the proposed method only needs a laser range finder mounted onto the robot end-effector and several predefined planes fixed to the base. As it suffices to lump all the kinematic errors into the initial poses of the local coordinate frames, the error model derived from the plane constraints is significantly simplified. An iterative least square algorithm is employed to identify the kinematic errors of the robot. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed calibration method.