A research project at the Manufacturing Technology Centre has used metrology to deliver ultra-accurate robotic automation. The Metrology Assisted Robotic Automation (MARA) project at the Coventry-based MTC has solved a longstanding manufacturing problem with robotic accuracy, and will result in major improvements in the precision and consistency of robotic operations. Industrial robots have been used for repetitive tasks for many years, with good results, but the increasing use of offline computer programming has underlined the fact that industrial robots are generally not accurate devices. Previous robot calibration fixes have improved accuracy to better than 1mm, which is adequate for most tasks. However, applications requiring a very high degree of accuracy have presented challenges.
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