A method to locate initial welding position of container reinforcing plates using structured-light

The location of welding initial position is the main problem to realize automatic welding in the process of container reinforced plate welding. According to the characteristic of container reinforced plate, the location system for reinforced plate welding is designed, which is based on the structured light. This system consists of two lasers and one camera, which is easier for image processing with its obvious characteristics of structured-light in welding environment. Welding robot can be guided to the initial welding position of any planar weld automatically by the structured-light visual system. Structured-light center stripes and their endpoints are obtained by gray morphology and scanning column pixels of binary image. Then initial welding position is located by theory between points and lines. Using the superiority of structured light, this system solves the problem of reinforced plate localization, avoiding the drawbacks of instability, image processing which is high time-consuming and low precision.