Autonomous contour tracking using staircase method for industrial robot

One of the major problems in manufacturing industry is a manual contour tracking programming for industrial robot tasks. These tasks such as welding, sealing and painting applications are very tedious and time consuming. This paper presents a study on developing a staircase method in order to automate the manual programming process. This work will transform a standard industrial robot into autonomous contour tracking robot which has more value such as performs as coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The staircase algorithm has been developed and tested using a SCARA ADEPT robot. The experimental results demonstrate that the total good sample of 78 points was collected over 80 millimeter horizontal measuring distance.