Robot “Eye” Provides 360° Field of View

The production of precision products depends on robot control systems knowing the location of the adhesive bonding head or welding head to the nearest millimeter at all times. This means the robot needs some sort of eye. Specialized sensors can perform this function, most of which operate on the principle of laser triangulation. A laser diode projects a line of red light onto the workpiece, from which the light is reflected at a specific angle before being detected by a camera. From the position of the light striking the camera chip, the position and distance of the sensor with respect to the workpiece within the coordinate system can be calculated.