A Calibration Method of Robot Base Frame with Procrustes Analysis

In order to realize high precision industrial operations, based on the POE formula, an effective approach to calibrate the robot''s actual base frame (ABF) is proposed. Due to the existence of manufacturing errors, the ABF deviates slightly from nominal base frame (NBF).Using external precision measurement, the ABF can be established only through the three dimension (3D) position of the robot''s end-effector.To ensure the orthonormal constraints of rotation matrix as well as the precise solutions, Procrustes Analysis is introduced, where an optimal orthogonal matrix is solved out by the Lagrange Multiplier method and Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Furthermore, calibration experiment on a serial 6-DOF robot is performed, where a FARO laser tracker is utilized to measure the 3D position. Finally, calibration result indicates that the positioning accuracy has been significantly improved after calibration. The calibration method is also applicable to other similar problems, such as multi-robot coordination and robot hand-eye system calibration.