Mobile collaborative welding system for complex welding seams

Abstract

The growing variety of products brings various workpieces, which have complex welding seams that cannot be welded by current welding robots fixed in the welding stations or carried by the gantry. Therefore, this paper proposes a mobile collaborative welding system composed of an AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) and a 6-DOF (Six-Degree-of-Freedom) collaborative robot. Considering the complex welding seams, a mobile collaborative welding method is proposed. The collaborative welding method includes three steps, i.e., welding seam acquisition, welding seam classification and segmentation, and welding task allocation. The authors present a new approach to acquire the spatial position characteristics of welding seams based on the human-machine collaboration. According to the spatial position characteristics of the welding seams, the welding type identification and classification segmentation can be obtained. Finally, the welding tasks of the robot and AGV can be allocated.