This chapter presents a software system created to allow to design complex robot trajectories in the cartesian space, used for tasks like milling or engraving with the aid of a robot. The experimental setup was created using an ABB (ASEA Brown Boveri) IRB 140 robot on which was mounted an engraving tool (which was equipped with a high frequency vibrating pin) or a drilling tool (an electric milling machine controlled with I/O signals) and a computer which is executing a CAD application allowing the design of the path that the robot must follow in order to execute the engraving/milling task. The robot job or task is defined by the set of surfaces of the raw object and of the object after being processed, by subtracting these two surfaces the robot task is given by the set of points resulted after the subtraction. The subtraction operation offers a set of points which must be connected in order to obtain the final trajectory, if the task is to engrave a shape then the tool will be normal to the object surface. The algorithm which is generating the surface is presented along with some experimental results.
Part of the book: Service Robots