On the calibration of a 6D laser tracking system for contactless, dynamic robot measurements

The repeatability of today's robots is at least a magnitude better than their accuracy. A proper tool to improve accuracy provides geometric calibration which needs reliable and accurate measurement data of the actual robot. The single beam Laser Tracking System "LuxWess" provides can excellent means to obtain these measurements. In this paper we describe the calibration of the geometry of this measurement tool, itself. The calibration method is cheap and flexible, no external reference measurements are needed. In the following we describe the principles of the design of our system and shortly mention why it is superior to other laser trackers. Then we give a description of the model and the calibration for three dimensional measurements.