A Comparative Review of Hand-Eye Calibration Techniques for Vision Guided Robots

Hand-eye calibration enables proper perception of the environment in which a vision guided robot operates. Additionally, it enables the mapping of the scene in the robots frame. Proper hand-eye calibration is crucial when sub-millimetre perceptual accuracy is needed. For example, in robot assisted surgery, a poorly calibrated robot would cause damage to surrounding vital tissues and organs, endangering the life of a patient. A lot of research has gone into ways of accurately calibrating the hand-eye system of a robot with different levels of success, challenges, resource requirements and complexities. As such, academics and industrial practitioners are faced with the challenge of choosing which algorithm meets the implementation requirements based on the identified constraints. This review aims to give a general overview of the strengths and weaknesses of different hand-eye calibration algorithms available to academics and industrial practitioners to make an informed design decision, as well as incite possible areas of research based on the identified challenges. We also discuss different calibration targets which is an important part of the calibration process that is often overlooked in the design process

Design and motion control of a 6-UPS fully parallel robot for long bone fracture reduction : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Mechatronics at Massey University

The incidences of long bone fractures in New Zealand are approximately 1 in 10,000. Long bones such as tibia and femur have complicated anatomic structures, making the realignment of these long bone fractures reliant on the skill of the surgeon. The drawbacks of current practice result in long time exposure to radiation, slow recovery and possible morbidity. A semi-automated long bone fracture reduction system based on a 6-DOF parallel robot platform has been in development since 2004. The developed 6-DOF parallel robot platform comprises of six linear actuators with rotary incremental encoders. To implement a realignment of long bone fractures, a framework for the 6-DOF platform robot has been developed. The inverse kinematics and singularity of the 6-DOF parallel robot has been studied to obtain the actions and Jacobin matrices. In motion control a multiple axis motion controller and amplifiers were used for 6-DOF parallel robot. PID tuning algorithms were developed based on the combination of the general tuning result and the contour control principle. The PID parameters have been validated by a number of experiments. The practical realignment of bone fractures requires a "Pull-Rotate-Push" action implemented by the 6-DOF parallel robot. After calibration, the reduction trajectories were generated accurately. The actual trials on the artificial fractures have shown that the robot developed is capable of performing the required reduction motion

Indoor localization of a mobile robot using sensor fusion : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Mechatronics with Honours at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Reliable indoor navigation of mobile robots has been a popular research topic in recent years. GPS systems used for outdoor mobile robot navigation can not be used indoor (warehouse, hospital or other buildings) because it requires an unobstructed view of the sky. Therefore a specially designed indoor localization system for mobile robot is needed. This project aims to develop a reliable position and heading angle estimator for real time indoor localization of mobile robots. Two different techniques have been developed and each consisted of three different sensor modules based on infrared sensing, calibrated odometry and calibrated gyroscope. Integration of these three sensor modules is achieved by applying the real time Kalman filter which provides filtered and reliable information of a mobile robot's current location and orientation relative to its environment. Extensive experimental results are provided to demonstrate its improvement over conventional methods like dead reckoning. In addition, a control strategy is developed to control the mobile robot to move along the planned trajectory. The techniques developed in this project have potentials for the application for mobile robots in medical service, health care, surveillances, search and rescue in indoor environments

Generic Techniques for the Calibration of Robots with Application of the 3-D Fixtures and Statistical Technique on the PUMA 500 and ARID Robots

A relatively simple, inexpensive, and generic technique that could be used in both laboratories and some operation site environments is introduced at the Robotics Applications and Development Laboratory (RADL) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). In addition, this report gives a detailed explanation of the set up procedure, data collection, and analysis using this new technique that was developed at the State University of New York at Farmingdale. The technique was used to evaluate the repeatability, accuracy, and overshoot of the Unimate Industrial Robot, PUMA 500. The data were statistically analyzed to provide an insight into the performance of the systems and components of the robot. Also, the same technique was used to check the forward kinematics against the inverse kinematics of RADL's PUMA robot. Recommendations were made for RADL to use this technique for laboratory calibration of the currently existing robots such as the ASEA, high speed controller, Automated Radiator Inspection Device (ARID) etc. Also, recommendations were made to develop and establish other calibration techniques that will be more suitable for site calibration environment and robot certification

3D modeling of indoor environments by a mobile platform with a laser scanner and panoramic camera

One major challenge of 3DTV is content acquisition. Here, we present a method to acquire a realistic, visually convincing D model of indoor environments based on a mobile platform that is equipped with a laser range scanner and a panoramic camera. The data of the 2D laser scans are used to solve the simultaneous lo- calization and mapping problem and to extract walls. Textures for walls and floor are built from the images of a calibrated panoramic camera. Multiresolution blending is used to hide seams in the gen- erated textures. The scene is further enriched by 3D-geometry cal- culated from a graph cut stereo technique. We present experimental results from a moderately large real environment.