Abstract:Considering the requirements of high-precision cross-scale, good feature universality, and collaborative measurement with multi-styluses for assembly pose of large components, a contact-type measuring robot was constructed, which used six-axis collaborative robot as motion carrier and elastic styluses as measuring sensors. It features programmable automation, wide operating range, high repeatability in measurement accuracy, and strong product adaptability. Most existing calibration methods of robot tool coordinate system assume the tool to be a rigid body, which makes it difficult to accurately calibrate the tool coordinate system for elastic styluses and fails to unify the relationships among multiple styluses. To address these issues, the calibration method of elastic styluses tool coordinate systems for contact-type measuring robot based on standard sphere was proposed. Firstly, the calibration principle and error analysis of elastic stylus tool coordinate system were derived. Secondly, the iterative calibration methods of multiple elastic styluses tool coordinate systems based on standard sphere were proposed. The calibration methods of stylus diameters, main elastic stylus tool coordinate system, and star-shaped elastic styluses tool coordinate systems were established, respectively. This allowed for the acquisition of tool coordinate systems of multi-styluses and the realization of collaborative measurement between multi-styluses. Finally, measurement experiments were conducted. The results demonstrate that the contact-type six-axis measuring robot system achieved the stylus diameter calibration accuracy of better than 0.007 mm, the tool coordinate system calibration accuracy of better than 0.016 mm, the single-point repeatability measurement accuracy of better than 0.016 mm, the spatial measurement accuracy of better than 0.030 mm. Experiments also show that the product's position measurement accuracy is better than 0.050 mm, and attitude measurement accuracy is better than 0.010°. These results demonstrate that the contact-type measuring robot possesses significant potential for a wide range of engineering applications, such as automated assembly and feature measurement.