Benchmarking Protocols for Evaluating Small Parts Robotic Assembly Systems.

This paper presents a set of performance metrics, test methods, and associated artifacts to help progress the development and deployment of robotic assembly systems. The designs for three task board artifacts that replicate small part insertion and fastening operations such as threading, snap fitting, and meshing with standard screws, nuts, washers, gears, electrical connectors, belt drives, and wiring are presented. To support the evaluation of robotic assembly and disassembly operations, benchmarking protocols and performance metrics are presented that leverage these task boards.

Efficiently Improving and Quantifying Robot Accuracy In Situ.

The advancement of simulation-assisted robot programming, automation of high-tolerance assembly operations, and improvement of real-world performance engender a need for positionally accurate robots. Despite tight machining tolerances, good mechanical design, and careful assembly, robotic arms typically exhibit average Cartesian positioning errors of several millimeters. Fortunately, the vast majority of this error can be removed in software by proper calibration of the so-called "zero-offsets" of a robot's joints.

Comparative Peg-in-Hole Testing of a Force-Based Manipulation Controlled Robotic Hand.

Force-based manipulation control strategies are evolving as a primary mechanism in robotics for performing the fine manipulation tasks typical within manufacturing assembly. The ability to systematically compare robotic system performance and quantify true advancement in fine manipulation is of utmost importance. Accordingly, the objectives of this paper are threefold: 1) creation of a peg-in-hole test method with associated performance metrics and a systematic data analysis strategy for performance benchmarking, 2) first demonstration of a recently developed manipulation controller piloting a robotic hand and its paired task-level logic for completing the peg-in-hole test, and 3) exemplifying the performance benchmarking technique by comparing two approaches for robotic insertions-the previously mentioned compliant hand, stiff arm system, and a stiff gripper, compliant arm system.

Strategies for Improving and Evaluating Robot Registration Performance.

Unlabelled: The ability to calculate rigid-body transformations between arbitrary coordinate systems (i.e., registration) is an invaluable tool in robotics.