An automatic programming tool for robotic polishing tasks

Parts polishing is a repetitive task generally done in unhealthy conditions. It is therefore desirable that robots replace humans in performing these kind of tasks. Nevertheless, its programming is difficult, tedious and time-consuming. The paper presents a tool to automatically program a robot from a high level description of the polishing task. Given the specification of the polishing curves over the part, the location of the polishing bands where each operation must be performed, and a description of the cell, then a robot program to perform polishing trajectories in the optimum sequence is generated, the paths between trajectories being collision-free.