Abstract
Recently, techniques of acquiring 3-D information at high speed and with accuracy have been pursued with increasing demands for advanced and sophisticated tasks that a robot has to carry out.
A new approach to simultaneously measure 3-D position and orientation of robot environments is proposed in this paper. The 3-D sensor consists of a camera using a position sensitive device (PSD) and multiple LEDs attached to robotic devices such as a robot's hand and a teaching device.
Their 3-D position and orientation are calculated based on both 2-D coordinate values of the LEDs in an image plane of the camera and geometrical relationships among 3-D positions of the LEDs.
The 3-D sensor has advantages of simple system configuration and real-time response for reliably acquiring 3-D information of robotic devices.
Experimental results of applications using the 3-D sensor are presented. They are as follows: (1) visual detection of robot's hand position and orientation, (2) teaching of robot paths by a 3-D teaching device.
They show the feasibility of applying the 3-D sensor to these kinds of robotic tasks. Finally, future subjects and extensions of the 3-D sensor are discussed.
