Computer-Vision Control for a Floor-Tiling Robot

At this stage of the floor-tiling robot's development it was decided to concentrate on the autonomy at a workstation, which means that all operations at a workstation - stabilizing and calibrating at a workstation, loading tiles, etc. - including real-time quality assurance (QA) are done without human intervention, while the transfer between workstations is assisted by an operator. The QA function has to identify the exact location and orientation of tiles to be taken, since they may be expected to differ from those specified in the robot's program. This is needed in order to allow accurate setting of the tiles in straight lines and with a uniform distance between them. Additional/y, the QA function has to identify defective tiles. A computer vision system was developed to perform the QA functions. The prototype, its operational principles, and the experiments are described.