Robot sensors and transducers

Zusatztext

The use of sensor's with machines, whether to control them continuously or to inspect and verify their operation, can be highly cost-effective in particular areas of industrial automation. Examples of such areas include sensing systems to monitor tool condition, force and torque sensing for robot assembly systems, vision-based automatic inspection, and tracking sensor's for robot arc welding and seam sealing. Many think these will be the basis of an important future industry. So far, design of sensor systems to meet these needs has been (in the interest of cheapness) rather ad hoc and carefully tailored to the application both as to the transducer hardware and the associated processing software. There are now, however, encouraging signs of commonality emerging between different sensor application areas. For instance, many commercial vision systems and some tactile systems just emerging from research are able to use more or less standardized techniques for two-dimensional image processing and shape representation. Structured-light triangulation systems can be applied with relatively minor hardware and software variations to measure three-dimensional profiles of objects as diverse as individual soldered joints, body pressings, and weldments. Sensors make it possible for machines to recover 'sensibly' from errors, and standard software proce dures such as expert systems can now be applied to facilitate this.

Autorenportrait

Inhaltsangabe1 Introduction.- 1.1 Historical notes.- 1.2 Definitions of sensor and transducer.- 1.3 Generalities.- I Transducers.- 2 Position transducers.- 2.1 Overview.- 2.2 Potentiometers.- 2.3 Optical encoders.- 2.4 Interfacing of position transducers.- 2.5 Conclusions.- 2.6 Revision questions.- 2.7 Further reading material.- 3 Light transducers.- 3.1 Overview.- 3.2 Photoresistors.- 3.3 Photodiodes and Photocells.- 3.4 Photomultipliers.- 3.5 Optical array transducers.- 3.6 Conclusions.- 3.7 Revision questions.- 3.8 Further reading material.- 4 Force transducers.- 4.1 Overview.- 4.2 Force measurement generalities.- 4.3 Strain gauges.- 4.4 Non-resistive transducers.- 4.5 Load cells.- 4.6 Interfacing of force transducers.- 4.7 Conclusions.- 4.8 Revision questions.- 4.9 Further reading material.- 5 Velocity transducers.- 5.1 Overview.- 5.2 Tachogenerator.- 5.3 Optical incremental encoder systems.- 5.4 Interfacing of velocity transducers.- 5.5 Conclusions.- 5.6 Revision questions.- 5.7 Further reading material.- II Sensors.- 6 Robot Vision Sensors.- 6.1 Overview.- 6.2 Illumination considerations.- 6.3 Vision sensors generalities.- 6.4 2-D sensors.- 6.5 3-D sensors.- 6.6 Interfacing of vision sensors.- 6.7 Conclusions.- 6.8 Revision questions.- 6.9 Further reading material.- 7 Robot Tactile Sensors.- 7.1 Overview.- 7.2 Touch sensing.- 7.3 Tactile sensing.- 7.4 Interfacing of tactile sensors.- 7.5 Conclusions.- 7.6 Revision questions.- 7.7 Further reading material.- III Image Processing.- 8 Image processing.- 8.1 Overview.- 8.2 Convolution and filtering.- 8.3 Image processing.- 8.4 Image analysis.- 8.5 Conclusions.- 8.6 Revision questions.- 8.7 Further reading material.- Solutions to revision questions.- References.

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