A robot chamfering system for special-shaped and thin-walled workpieces

Purpose This paper aims to propose a robotic automation system for processing special-shaped thin-walled workpieces, which includes a measurement part and a processing part. Design/methodology/approach In the measurement part, to efficiently and accurately realize the three-dimensional camera hand-eye calibration based on a large amount of measurement data, this paper improves the traditional probabilistic method. To solve the problem of time-consuming in the extraction of point cloud features, this paper proposes a point cloud feature extraction method based on seed points. In the processing part, the authors design a new type of chamfering tool. During the process, the robot adopts admittance control to perform compensation according to the feedback of four sensors mounted on the tool. Findings Experiments show that the proposed system can make the tool smoothly fit the chamfered edge during processing and the machined chamfer meets the processing requirements of 0.5 × 0.5 to 0.9 × 0.9 mm2. Practical implications The proposed design and approach can be applied on many types of special-shaped thin-walled parts. This will give a new solution for the automation integration problem in aerospace manufacturing. Originality/value A novel robotic automation system for processing special-shaped thin-walled workpieces is proposed and a new type of chamfering tool is designed. Furthermore, a more accurate probabilistic hand-eye calibration method and a more efficient point cloud extraction method are proposed, which are suitable for this system when comparing with the traditional methods.