View planning applied to coordinate measuring machine (CMM) measurement

In this paper, view planning for tactile measurement is studied. A coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is widely used for object verification and reconstruction. For given sampling points on an object, measurement error caused by the radius of the CMM ball probe, the number of probe reorientations and probe movements are expected to be minimized. The main goal of this paper is to provide the best probe orientation so as to have an improved tactile measurement in terms of measurement error and inspection time while maximizing sampling point measurements per probe position. Measurement error is mathematically modeled as a function of the surface normal and the probe approach direction. To achieve this, the authors investigated and implemented the view planning algorithm accompanied by the parametric studies to find the best probe orientation. For verification, numerical experiments were carried out using computer-generated test models. Results show that the best probe orientation obtained by the view planning algorithm as proposed in this paper gives the smallest standard deviation of measurement error globally and also provides a reduced measurement error and a smaller amount of probe movement.