Automated tool trajectory planning of industrial robots for painting composite surfaces

Abstract

Automatic trajectory generation for spray painting is highly desirable for today's automotive manufacturing. Generating paint gun trajectories for free-form surfaces to satisfy paint thickness requirements is still highly challenging due to the complex geometry of free-form surfaces. In this paper, a CAD-guided paint gun trajectory generation system for free-form surfaces has been developed. The system utilizes the CAD information of a free-form surface and a paint gun model to automatically generate a paint gun trajectory to satisfy the paint thickness requirements. Complex surfaces are divided into patches to satisfy the constraints. A trajectory integration algorithm is developed to integrate the trajectories of the patches. The paint thickness deviation from the required paint thickness is optimized by modifying the paint gun velocity. A paint thickness verification method is also developed to verify the generated trajectories. The results of simulations have shown that the trajectory generation system achieves satisfactory performance. This trajectory generation system can also be applied to generate trajectories for many other CAD-guided robot trajectory planning applications in surface manufacturing. © 2006 Springer-Verlag London Limited.