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bearings, belts, screws and so forth). So the controllers closed-loop software will respond by
slightly increasing the motor current and, thus, motor torque.
Upon subsequent calculations of the servo velocity loop, the controller will have
additional information about whether the robot arm has touched an obstruction. If the motor
velocity again begins to increase, then the controller can deduce that it was friction and not an
obstruction that caused the need for more motor torque. If, however, the servomotor continues
to slow even with additional applied torque, then the controller deduces that the robot arm has
found an obstruction. The controller notes the motor position while simultaneously reducing
servomotor torque to ensure that contact with the tool is gentle.
Its possible to reduce the force generated during the intentional collision of the robot
wand and the station by factoring in the background torque of the arm. Specifically, one
measures the background torque for each robot axis to be touch-calibrated. The method is to
first move the robot to a safe area where it can make short movements without touching
anything. Then one-by-one, each motor is told to make a constant velocity move (usually the
same velocity used in the calibration step). When the axis has reached the constant velocity
(that is, it has finished accelerating), the machine controller samples the average motor torque.
This average is made up of numerous instantaneous motor torques, each such torque being the
output of the closed-loop control.
Once the sampling process is complete, the background torque value is determined by
taking the simple average of these samples. The sampling frequency and the number of
samples taken depend on the specific design of the machine. But a common sample size might
be 100 measurements. The average background torque would therefore be about 0.01 of the
total value.
The system stores the background torques it has calculated for each of the axes to be
used during touch calibration. Then, as the arm moves toward the feature to be touched, the
controller calculates a moving average of the torques it sees for each axis, and compares them
to the stored background torques. The system can thus decide that it has touched something
when this moving average exceeds some torque limit.
The torque limit equals the dynamic background torque plus a threshold limit. The
threshold limit is a value chosen to be larger than the torque variations seen while moving at
the touch-sensing velocity. During the routine to quantify the dynamic background torque, the
controller gauges the statistical variation of the torque samples and sets the threshold value at
some multiple of the background torque.
Once the system senses the contact, it captures the current axis position and then
moves away from the touch point.
During a typical calibration procedure, the robot has a rough idea of where features are
located even before it touches them. Thats because tool developers prime the controller with
the positions of these items from CAD drawings or manual measurements.
Designers chose the features to be touched such that the motion to locate each one is
isolated to one robot axis. This ensures en unlinked, independent coordinate.
To accurately find a feature with touch calibration, it is important to note that
most machines have semi rigid drive trains. The result is a certain amount of flexibility in
each axis that calibration procedures must take into account. The way to cancel out this
flexibility is by touching a feature from two opposite directions. In other words, make a
positive velocity or directional move to determine a feature position, then a negative velocity
or directional move to determine the same feature. In cases where its not possible to touch a
feature from both directions, it may be possible to touch a secondary feature with a known
spatial relationship to the first.
To understand why the above two-direction technique cancels out flexibility, it is
helpful to remember that the torque limit used for touch sensing is the summation of the
background torque and a threshold limit. The summation of these two torques represents a
constant applied tension. With regard to a semi rigid drive train, this reflects an equal tension
on arm components when sensing in the positive and negative directions. It is this equal
tension which makes it possible to cancel the effects of drive flexibility.
Finally, several types of robots are amenable to the autocalibration technique. Some
robots are designed with one motor per axis. Others are designed with one motor per link so
that two or more motors must move in unison to move a single axis. Depending on the design
of the robot, it is important to characterize the axis torques of all motors.
With just one motor per axis the technique simplifies into the monitoring of a single
motor. In the case of multiple motors handling axis control, a good technique is to monitor the
summation of the absolute values of the motor torque required to move the axis. In cases
where one motor puts out much more torque than the others involved in handling a single
axis, it may be acceptable to monitor only the most powerful one. The determination of the
preferable technique depends on the exact design of the machine.
Autocalibration technology has been implemented with a wide variety of robot
designs. It has proven efficient with both legacy belt-drive designs and state-of-the-art directdrive robots. Laboratory test data shows repeatability of better than o.4 mm. in locating a
wafer-transfer station using a modern direct-drive robot.