Measurement pose selection and calibration forecast for manipulators with complex kinematic structures

Kinematic calibration of complex manipulators comprises the choice of measurement poses, i.e. the position and the orientation of the end-effector in the workspace of the manipulator. The calibration result expressed by the resulting condition of the identification matrix depends essentially on the chosen measurement poses. In this article a fast and effective algorithm is proposed to find a well-conditioned set of measurement poses within a fixed set of pose configurations. Further on, an interrelationship between the number of measurement poses and the standard deviation of the tool center point (TCP) is presented. The practical usefulness of the algorithm is exemplified by means of a parallel kinematic machine. (C) 2008 CIRP.