Robot target tracking method using a structured laser beam

A 3D visual sensing method using a laser structured beam is presented for robotic tracking applications in a simple and reliable manner. A cylindrical shaped laser structured beam is proposed to measure the pose and position of the target surface. When the proposed laser beam intersects on the surface along the target trajectory, an elliptic pattern is generated. Its ellipse parameters can be induced mathematically by the geometrical relationship of the sensor coordinate and target coordinate. The depth and orientation of the target surface are directly determined by the ellipse parameters. In particular, two discontinuous points on the ellipse pattern, induced by seam trajectory, indicate mathematically the 3D direction for robotic tracking. To investigate the performance of this method, experiments with a 6 axis robot system are conducted on two different types of seam trajectories. The results show that this method is very suitable for robot seam tracking applications due to its excellence in accuracy and efficiency.