The Role of Absolute Positioning Error in Hand-Eye Calibration and Robotic Guidance Systems: An Analysis

Robotic manipulators deal with serious issues due to their absolute positioning error. This error is usually compensated by an operator in classical robot programming using the teach-and-play method. However, it has a significant effect on accuracy of robotic guidance systems (RGS) that automatically generate process tool trajectory based on the measured data from a sensor. In this paper, we firstly describe the various components of an RGS that affect its overall accuracy. We then introduce a proposed model for the calibration process (MCP) that can be used to analyze the effect of absolute positioning errors on the accuracy of hand-eye calibration, six-point calibration of a process tool and mutual transformation between these tools. Simulations were used to evaluate the proposed MCP model. The results of this analysis are crucial for the practical use of RGS.