Acoustic Range Sensing for Robotic Control

Manufacturing systems often require frequent changes in product shape or assembly positioning. Effective use of robots in production lines require sensors to adapt the path of the end effector to the task. In addition variations in part details in many batch process or low volume production runs may arise which are not incorporated in the off-line programming assembly procedures. It is therefore desirable to incorporate the adaptive ability to follow a surface from a precisely fixed offset distance of a few inches/centimeters in real time to track true surface contours, while still satisfying global task goals.