Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto: Calibrating Robots with Python

This talk was presented at Montréal-Python 67: Ultramodern Vintage - PyCon Canada Special

Modern robotic applications often rely on offline programming to reduce process downtime. In a virtual environment, robot application specialists may program, visualize, and test their robotic application before uploading it to the real production environment, saving time and costs. However, to achieve a high level of fidelity between virtual and production environments, the robot system must be accurate.

Unfortunately, even though most industrial robots are inherently precise (i.e., repeatable), they are not necessarily very accurate. One cost-effective approach to obtaining a more accurate robot is through calibration, where the actual kinematic and non-kinematic parameters of the robot model are identified and improved upon when compared to the nominal model. This talk introduces pybotics, an open-source Python toolbox for robot kinematics and calibration. The talk will feature the following topics:

• An introduction to modern industrial robotics
• Spatial descriptions and transformations
• Robot kinematics
• Robot calibration with pybotics + NumPy + SciPy