Vive for Robotics: Rapid Robot Cell Calibration

The use of an HTC Vive; a virtual reality (VR) system and its innovative tracking technology is explored in order to create an approximate one-to-one mapping to the virtual representation of a robot cell. The mapping is found by performing hand-eye calibration, establishing a spatial relationship between the inertial frames of the robot cell and the tracking system. One of the main contributions of this article is the development of an open-source Robotic Operating System (ROS) package for VR devices such as the Vive. The package includes automated calibration procedures such that the devices gives a centimetric measurement error in the robot cell. The calibrated system has problems that are related to specific issues of the tracking technology. This article outlines these issues, their cause, and potential fixes in a concise manner. A simple assembly scenario is presented, where the outline of objects in the robot cell are defined by registering points with a Vive tracker. The potential use cases of the calibrated system are limited by its accuracy, and depends on the required tolerances.