Robot cloning is the recovery or reproduction of a robot installation. Avoiding manual tracking of robot programmes and exploiting synergy effects are the goals of robot cloning.
However, these goals are often not achieved due to positional misalignment of the cloned robots, requiring time-consuming and costly re-teaching. There is a time-saving and accurate way to largely avoid this manual tracking of robot programmes: store the original calibration and then restore it; this is possible with LaserLAB measurement sensor technology.
Restoring a robot installation
It is not uncommon for the number and complexity of robot programmes in a robotic system to grow with the tasks over time. Obviously, if the system breaks down due to a crash or component replacement (motor, gearbox, manual or robot replacement), the re-teaching effort is always higher. In the worst case, this can take several days.
Duplication of a robotic systems
In practice, robot programmes are often extensively teached on one system and then duplicated on one or more identical systems, if possible without manual reteaching. This is a difficult task, but one that can be achieved if, firstly, the target kinematics are as identical as possible to the master kinematics, which can be ensured by calibrating the robots, and, secondly, the component coordinate systems of the robots are individually calibrated at their respective locations. For more information, see Measuring in Workpiece Coordinate Systems.