Geometric and Stiffness Modeling and Design of Calibration Experiments for the 7 dof Serial Manipulator KUKA iiwa 14 R820

TL;DR

This paper develops a method for optimal calibration pose selection and stiffness modeling of a 7 DOF industrial robot, extending existing planar approaches to 3D space and applying it to the KUKA iiwa14 R820.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for optimal pose selection in 3D space for complex manipulators, using a decomposition strategy and applies it to a real industrial robot.

Findings

Optimal pose configuration improves calibration accuracy.

Stiffness modeling using VJM and MSA approaches is effective.

Method enhances calibration efficiency for complex manipulators.

Abstract

The present project deals with the elastostatic modeling and calibration experiment of spacial industrial manipulators using an optimal selection of measurements pose, for the calibration procedure, the optimal pose selection aims to the efficiency improvement of identification procedure for serial manipulators which reduces noise impact on the parameters identification precision, it is usually used for planar manipulators, our work is mainly to extend the approach for a more complicated manipulator in 3D space using a wise decomposition of the spacial manipulator into a set of serial sub-chains, the optimal pose configuration is then used in the calibration procedure using the complete and irreducible model for the 7 DOF serial manipulator. The methodology is illustrated with the anthropomorphic industrial robot KUKA iiwa14 R820 for which, we performed the calibration and constructed the stiffness modeling using two different approaches namely VJM (Virtual Joint Modeling) and MSA (Matrix Structural Analysis).