Path generation for scanning large-size equipment using industrial robot

In manufacturing industry or equipment painting fields, the equipment may have minor shape changes. In order to obtain a better fabrication or painting results, it is required to get an accurate on-site 3D data of the equipment rapidly. A new path generating method on industrial robot with 3D scanner is proposed in this paper. The main idea of the method is to obtain a coarse model of the equipment from the CAD and translate it into the robot coordinate system. Then the model is segmented into flatness zones. Meaningful zone information and collision detection are used to generate the scanning path which could be used by the robots directly. The simulation and the on-site experiment results show its effectiveness and feasibility using the ABB´s 5400 robot and TOF depth camera.