Robotic Assistance for Peg-and-Hole Alignment by Mimicking Annular Solar Eclipse Process.

This study focuses on robotic assistance for peg-and-hole alignment with micrometer-order clearance. The objective of the robotic assistance is to cooperate with a human operator based on a coarse-to-fine strategy in which the human operator conducts coarse alignment and the robotic assistance realizes fine alignment. Robotic-assisted fine alignment is achieved by mimicking the process toward annularity of an annular solar eclipse. The first principal axis of a specified image feature (we call it a eclipse feature) is calculated by subtracting the surfaces of a hole part (a small gear with an inner diameter of 1 mm) and a peg part (a shaft with a diameter of 0.95 mm). Accordingly, control strategy is developed to realize accurate alignment. Moreover, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experimental evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]