General Electric Company

Larry M Sweet

Kenneth B Haefner

Ming H Kuo

A real time steering capability is provided to permit robot motion to be modified continuously in three dimensions as the robot is moving along a taught path. An arc welding robot or other taught path robot has a sensor located on the robot arm to sense the position of a desired path. The tracking control provides real time steering commands to the standard robot taught path and are calculated based on maintaining a constant, preprogrammed velocity along the desired path and coordination with the taught path. Offsets to the robot taught path are computed in a manner that allows the robot to smoothly follow the actual path as measured by the look ahead path sensor. The offsets are determined as separate x, y, z and twist integrations for the end effector and represent the total deviations from the robot taught path.

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Schenectady, NY, United States of America

Larry M Sweet