Industrial robot path planning for polishing applications

Industrial robot path planning for polishing is crucial to improve product quality. Current methods have many disadvantages: (a) product quality is not consistent caused by the variations of part dimension, geometry and robot path accuracy; (b) robot path planning is very challenging and time consuming. To solve these problems, we propose a polishing path planning method which is easy to use. A complex part is partitioned into simple surfaces first such as relatively flat surface and curved surface. The path generation for individual surface is then discussed. Because a complex part consists of several surfaces, a path connection method is also proposed to generate a whole path for a complex part. Experiments were performed to validate the proposed methods. The proposed path planning method is easy to implement and can greatly save the time for polishing path planning, thus reduce manufacturing cost.