Development of a vision-based 6D pose estimation end effector for industrial manipulators in lightweight production environments

Carbon fiber reinforced plastics are playing a key role for aircraft constructions nowadays as well as in the future because of the convenient ratio of strength to weight. Due to the growing requirements of this market, an automation of the production process is necessary. Because of the high unit volumes and accuracy required, the use of robots with increased work accuracy is essential. The German Aerospace Center has developed, in an internal cooperation, an end effector for the camera-based determination of its position and orientation in space. This article deals with the construction and structure of the end effector and first experimental results.