A critical review on calibration of robots

Abstract

This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the calibration of robots. The existing studies related to this field are critically analysed and examined to ascertain the trends in the field and to possibly identify one of the best techniques of doing the calibration of robots. Since robots are similar to the mechanical system, which can be influenced by changes caused by wear, manufacturing error, backlash error, assembly of parts. As calibration plays a very important role in increasing robot positioning accuracy, repeatability and resolution. Hence, this study provides an overview on the techniques for calibration of robots, types of calibration approaches, impact on different kinds of accuracy and importance of calibration in operating the robots. So, traditional and nontraditional approaches are confined here to calibrate serial and parallel robots. The cost-effective way of choosing technique is determined to provide absolute accuracy of the robot. Calibration of parallel robots is quite complicated as compared to serial robots. So, there is always a need to determine the best method of calibration which is less costly and reasonable.