Automation of precision finishing

Precision finishing processes are heavily dependent upon human skills and their automation is demanded. In general, a robot arm is suitable to automate such finishing processes especially in the case that a target work-piece has a complicated shape. In this research, a precision finishing system with a force-controlled robot is developed and applied to an actual finishing process of aero engines' parts. In order to automate precision finishing, four functions are necessary: compensation of the absolute positioning error of the robot, path planning with CAD models, touch sensing measurement, and an original robot language which integrates those functions. In this paper, a function of automatic measurement by touch sensing is developed, implemented by the original robot language, and evaluated through an experiment.