Autonomous Control Strategy for High Precision Marking of Installation Drill Holes Using a Mobile Robot

Abstract

Modern production lines typically consist of several components, which have to be installed with high precision in order to work together harmoniously. Upon installation of this equipment, a vast number of drill holes need to be marked. This stage of the setup process of a factory is performed manually at present and henceforth it is both time-consuming and error-prone. Within this work, we present a method to accomplish this task autonomously by means of possibly multiple mobile robots. To this end, we propose a hierarchical event based control strategy for the mixed-integer optimal control problem and provide insight into real-time capable solution methods. Moreover, an experimental setup utilizing a Leica AT901-LR laser tracker and a KUKA youBot is studied. This case study shows that the process can be performed autonomously satisfying the desired marking precision and yet be completed within a shorter time frame thus reducing the costs.