Profile measurement sensor for robotic laser welding

Abstract

A profile measurement sensor is developed and applied to robotic laser welding. The sensor consists of a PC based camera and a stripe-type laser diode. The surface profile of welding objects and other useful features are available with the sensor. Especially, the working distance of the sensor can be changed according to the application. Design of the sensor and implementation of necessary image processing are highlighted in this paper. A simple and efficient control scheme of the whole system is also presented. The profile measurement and seam tracking experiments were performed to evaluate operations of the system. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.