EngngApplic. Artif. lntell. Vol. 9, No. 1, pp.

83-93, 1996
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Contributed Paper

Inverse Robot Calibration Using Artificial Neural Networks

XIAOLIN ZHONG
Napier University, U.K.

JOHN LEWIS
Napier University, U.K.

F R A N C I S L. N - N A G Y
University of Salford, U.K.

(Received March 1995)

Robot end-effector locations (position and orientation) achieved by controlling joint values obtained
from a robot controller will, in general, deviate from the desired location due to inaccuracies in the
internal kinematic model. Inverse calibration is defined as finding the corrected joint values to drive a
robot so that deviations of the end-effector are minimised. Conventional numerical approaches to the
inverse calibration of robots are time-consuming and suffer from numerical problems of ill-
conditioning and singularities. In this paper, methods using arUficial neural networks (NN) have been
developed for robot inverse compensation, for both local and global calibration problems. Simulation
and experimental results for a Puma robot are presented to show the effectiveness of the NN-based
approach.

Keywords: Robot calibration, autonomous calibration, inverse compensation, generic accuracy

model, artificial neural networks, higher-order networks.

1. INTRODUCTION have analytic closed-form solutions. However, due to

1.1. Robot calibration problem
Robot positioning accuracy is a major concern when
applying off-line programming methods in advanced
robotic manufacturing systems. Whilst an industrial
robot has reasonably good repeatability, its positioning
accuracy is relatively poor. The desired locations of a
robot end-effector are normally specified in Cartesian
space, while these locations are achieved by controlling
joint variables in the robot's joint space. The transfor-
mation from Cartesian space to joint space is called the
inverse transformation in robotics. The inverse trans-
formation is a computationally intensive procedure for
general-form multi-link manipulators, the accurate
solution of which depends on the algorithms used and
on precise knowledge of the robot parameters. In
practice, most industrial robots are designed to have
simple-form kinematics I so that the inverse problems
Correspondence should be sent to: Dr X. Zhong, Department of
Mechanical, Manufacturing and Software Engineering, Napier
University, 10 Colinton Road, Edinburgh EH10 5DT, U.K.
manufacturing tolerance, set-up errors, wear and tear,
transmission errors, compliance, etc., the internal
design model used in the robot controller will not
describe the transformation accurately. Therefore, the
actual locations achieved by controlling the joint
values, obtained from the controller's internal model,
will deviate from the desired locations. Robot inverse
calibration is defined as a process of finding the cor-
rected joint values, to drive the robot so that the end-
effector deviation errors can be minimised. 2 Robot
calibration can improve positioning accuracy to the
level of robot repeatability.
Most robot calibration work is concentrated on
kinematic-model-based calibration 3-6. Kinematic calib-
ration involves the following procedures:
(1) Set up an appropriate kinematic model.
(2) Take measurements of the robot end-effector's
location (position/orientation).
(3) Identify the actual kinematic parameters to
minimise the errors between the locations pre-
dicted by the model and the actual measured
ones (in the least-square sense).
(4) Implement the identified robot kinematic model.
83
84 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSEROBOT CALIBRATION
Kinematic model-based calibration has the following
limitations:
• The kinematic model takes only geometric factors
into account, but non-geometric factors such as
backlash, joint compliance, etc., may be signifi-
cant in affecting robot accuracy, depending on the
application.
• Identification is a complex numerical procedure
which can suffer from the numerical problem of
ill-conditioning resulting in inaccuracy and inef-
ficiency. The results of identification can hardly be
near-perfect due to the numerical inaccuracy and
limitations of the model used.
• Implementation of the identified model is proble-
matic due to the difficulty of modifying the con-
troller parameters, and there is additional diffi-
culty in solving the inversion problem of the
modified kinematic model. 4
1.2. Inverse compensation methods
Instead of modifying the kinematic parameters in the
robot controller directly, joint compensation
approaches 7'8 have been used to correct the errors
caused by the identified model errors. However, these
approaches are based on iterative inversion of the robot
Jacobian, and can therefore only perform compensa-
tion off-line, due to the computational expense, and the
algorithms break down in the vicinity of singular
robot 6,9 configurations. Zhuang e t al. 6' 9 formulated the
accuracy compensation problem as a linear control
problem, such that the linear quadratic regular method
can be applied to the design of a robust accuracy
compensator. The existence and uniqueness are
ensured in robot configurations near singularity by
adding a regulation term to the performance index.
However, the computation of the linear quadratic regu-
lator algorithm is expensive for on-line implementation
of robot joint compensations.
In the method of non-parametric calibration, intro-
ducd by Shamma and Whitney,2 the approximation
functions between joint corrections and robot configu-
rations were set up by using least-square fitting of
trivariate polynomials to the training data samples. The
single calibration of six DOF (degrees of freedom) was
separated into two calibrations, which comprise the
calibration of the first three major DOF and then the
calibration of the remaining three minor DOF.
However, only position compensations were con-
sidered, due to the polynomial approximation adopted
(the polynomial functions required will be too complex
to be determined by the numerical least-square solu-
tions for both position and orientation). Similarly,
Kozakiewicz e t al. 1° used a least-squares polynomial
approximation and multi-layered neural networks
(NN) to store joint corrections and interpolation for a 4
DOF Scara robot. Again, only position calibration was
considered, and the NN gave poor accuracy compared
with polynomial approximations.
NN-based approaches are appealing in robot inverse
transformation problems due to their computational
efficiency learning ability and robustness, it The capabi-
lities of feedforward NNs to estimate functions are
especially useful for applications where the functions
have no analytic expressions, or where the analytic
calculations are time consuming. In previous work) 2 a
pi-sigma-based NN architecture was designed for both
forward and inverse robot accuracy compensation
which exhibits efficient network learning and a higher-
order approximation capability. A NN-based method
provides a generic model of robot accuracy which is not
limited by the inability to model and identify specific
error sources. In contrast to numerical approaches to
inverse compensation, which are computationally
expensive, the NN approach to inverse compensation
has a constant-time solution which is efficient for on-
line implementation.
This paper extends the previous work in that it
compares both simulation and experimental results on
a robot inverse calibration problem using various
approaches. While the feedforward NN is effective for
robot inverse compensation for a small portion of the
robot's workspace, its training efficiency and accuracy
would be compromised if large calibration volume were
considered. For robot global calibration which involves
a large number of work points across the whole work-
space, the inverse compensation problem has been
reformulated such that a recurrent Hopfield
continuous-valued NN 13 can be applied.
This paper is organised as follows. The different
aspects of inverse robot calibration are described in the
next section. The kinematic calibration of a Puma 560
robot is performed for comparison. The numerical
procedure used to generate training data for NN com-
pensation is also described. Section 3 introduces the
feedforward NN architecture for local compensation
and the recurrent Hopfield algorithm for global com-
pensation. Finally, the compensation results for a six
DOF Puma robot using various compensation
approaches, with the experimental evaluations, are
presented.
2. INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION
2.1. Kinematic calibration
A Ferranti Merlin 750 precision co-ordinate measur-
ing machine (CMM) has been used to measure the end-
effector locations of a Puma 560 robot (with a cube
mounted in the end-effector; Fig. 1). As the work is
concerned here with robot accuracy in a local area of
the work space, where most fine operations (such as
assembly) are executed, an area of 200 by 400 by
200 mm in Cartesian space and 45° by 90° by 135° in the
orientation space (Euler angles) has been chosen as a
calibration area. 288 data points, uniformly distributed
in the calibration area, have been collected for calib-
 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION
Fig. 1. Robot end-effector location measurement using a co-ordinate measuring machine (CMM).
ration and evaluation, with 3, 4, 3, 2, 2 and 2 samplings
along each of six dimensions respectively.
After a number of measurements of robot end-
effector locations had been collected, the mathematical
model was established, and the parameters to be esti-
mated were chosen to perform the identification.
Adopting the widely-used Denavit-Hartenberg
(denoted as D - H ) parameters (k, q ) = [(a, d, a), q)],
the forward kinematic model can be established:
z = r(k, q)
where z is the location vector of the robot end-effector
in Cartesian space and f(k, q) is the mapping from the
robot joint space to Cartesian space. This is a non-
linear function of kinematic parameters k and joint
variables q. The residual error vector of the robot end-
effector et, corresponding to the l-th location measure-
ment Zl, is:
et(Ak, Aq) = z , - f(k, q/)
where l = 1, 2, . . . , M , and M is the number of meas-
urements, A k = ( A a , Ad, Aa); the kinematic error
parameter, Aq is joint zero error.
Assuming these parameter errors are configuration-
independent, they can be identified by a non-linear
least-square optimisation:
M
min ~ [e~Ak, Aq)]TQ[et(Ak, Aq)]
Ak, Aq I= l
where Q is a positive diagonal weight matrix used to
adjust the balance between end-effector position and
orientation accuracy.
The identification procedure has been eliminated in
the NN-based calibration; therefore, the above pro-
85
cedure is not essential for the neuro-compensation.
However, for the purpose of simulation and compari-
son, 120 data points ( M = 120) have been randomly
chosen from the collected data set to identify the
kinematic errors according to the above method. The
nominal kinematic parameters used for identification
are listed in Table 1 (nominal joint angles are obtained
from the nominal kinematic controller). After about
1000 iterations using a quasi-Newton search strategy,
the kinematic errors have been identified and are listed
(1) in Table 2. Robot base and tool parameters are not
included in the identification due to the difficulties of
modelling base and tool parameters using D - H para-
meter notation. The errors existing in base and tool
transformations could be compensated for in the least-
square sense by the kinematic parameters of robot
manipulator.
The average positioning error decreased from 4.3710
to 0.5033mm for the identification points after the
(2) kinematic parameters were updated by the identified
errors. It is worth mentioning that the linear least-
square method was also attempted for identification by
establishing an identification Jacobian using the same
data set, but this failed to converge due to the singular-
ity of the identification Jacobian. Obviously, the nonli-
near optimisation approach is computationally more
robust, though a longer computation time is required.
(3) Table 1. Nominal parameters of the Puma 560 robot
Link 1 2 3 4 5 6
ai 0 431.8 - 20.32 0 0 0
di 0 149.09 0 433.07 0 111.25
at - ~r/2 0 ~t/2 - n/2 3r/2 0
(length in mm and angles in radians)
 86 XIAOLIN ZHONG et aL : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION

Table 2. Identified kinematic errors of the Puma 560 robot

Link 1 2 3 4 5 6
Aai - 0.486 - 0.029 0.870 - 0.213 0.193 0.063
Adi - 0.244 0.899 0.911 - 2.007 - 3.407 - 0.042
Aai - 0.0004 - 0.0074 0.0147 - 0.0125 - 0.0178 - 0.0065
A0i 0.0010 - 0.0025 0.0000 0.0174 0.0057 0.0133

(length in mm and angles in radians)

2.2. Inverse compensations
Shamma and Whitney 2 categorised calibration into
forward calibration and inverse calibration. Forward
calibration involves finding the actual location in the
world space for a given joint configuration, while
inverse calibration involves finding exact joint values
for given locations in the world space.
Correspondingly, compensations can be made both in
the robot's world space and in the joint space, and can
be termed "forward" and "inverse" compensation res-
pectively, for convenience. Inverse compensations in
joint space are computationally more expensive than
the forward compensations, since numerical
approaches are involved. A widely used inverse com-
pensation is the N e w t o n - R a p h s o n ( N - R ) method,
which involves an inversion of the Jacobian matrix J(q)
to find the equivalent joint corrections at each ite-
ration.
6q = J-l(q)Ax, (4)
where Ax is a location error vector in Cartesian space,
which is calculated by evaluating the forward kinema-
tics of the identified model in kinematic calibration. 4 A
limitation of the N - R method lies in that the geometric
errors must be small; otherwise, convergence cannot be
guaranteed, and the method breaks down in the vicinity
of singular robot configurations, where the Jacobian
will be ill-conditioned or singular. The computation is
also expensive for on-line compensation, due to its
iterative nature.
Alternatively, the actual joint angles which drive the
robot to minimise the end-effector deviations can be
found by using non-linear least-square optimisation
without explicit evaluation of the Jacobian. The initial
values of the joint angles are the nominal joint angles
obtained from the robot controller.
min [f(k, qt) - zt]rQ[f(k, q,) - zt],
qt
shown in Fig. 2, the trained NN can be used to augment
the robot controller to achieve on-line inverse compen-
sations.
The method of using numerical optimisation to
obtain the data for joint compensation reduces the
data-collection time significantly compared with the
approach used by Shamma and Whitney, 2 in which they
measure the workspace location error first, and then re-
teach the data point manually such that the workspace
location error approaches zero. The robot joint values
at the two consecutive configurations are then used to
obtain the joint compensation amounts necessary to
compensate for the workspace location error.
3. NEURAL NETWORK ARCHITECTURE AND
ALGORITHM
For a local robot calibration problem, in which the
robot's accuracy is critical only in a small portion of its
workspace, a simple feedforward network with a
higher-order approximation capability is designed, to
learn the non-linear mapping between robot configu-
rations and joint corrections. The training exemplars
are taken from the off-line numerical inverse compen-
sations, which are based on the full location (position
and orientation) error measurements of a six-degree-
of-freedom (DOF) Puma robot at discrete locations,
uniformly distributed in the calibration volume. The
trained networks are then used to perform constant-
time compensations which are suitable for on-line
implementation.
3.1. Feedforward neural-net architecture and local
compensation
It is known that multilayered feedforward NNs can
approximate arbitrary continuous non-linear functions

where zj is obtained from direct measurement as in (2);

therefore, the accuracy of compensation is not limited
by the accuracy of identification as in the case of
kinematic calibration. As was seen from the identifica-
tion, non-linear optimisation uses a more robust search
strategy, and can converge to good solutions, given
sufficient time. However, its convergence is too slow
(5)

~ Nettral Net
Inverse
Compensator

De " inverse model

.esire~ xlel[ Join~ ~ . Robot ,ctual
- [Robot ~
for on-line implementation. Therefore, a feedforward
NN is used to store and interpolate the joint corrections Location uonnguration Location
obtained from the non-linear optimisation routine. As Fig. 2. NN-based inverse calibration compensation.
 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION 87

~i--1,2,...,6) hidden layer of each pi-sigma network. For six DOF

Puma robots, experiments show that 6 units in the
hidden layer achieves the best results. This agrees well
with analytic compensation models, which are gener-
ally up to 6th order polynomials of sinusoidal functions
of the joint angles.
The network shown in Fig. 3 will be trained separa-
tely for each component of the output vector, and put
together for implementation after training. Therefore,
the network training comprises six pi-sigma network
training processes. The theoretical proof of a pi-sigma
network's approximation capability, and the learning
algorithm, have been given in Ref. 16. For efficient
and stable learning, the asynchronous updating rule has
been adopted. That is, at each learning epoch, only
weights associated with one hidden unit will be chosen
to be updated at one time; this process is repeated until
Fig. 3. NN architecture for inverse compensation. all weights associated with each hidden unit have been
updated once. The weight updating is based on an LMS
(least-mean-square)-type learning rule, and batch
to any desired accuracy. However, there is no construc- learning is used to speed up the training process. Figure
tive method of determining the most suitable NN archi- 4 shows the first three of six Puma robot joint compen-
tectures for specific problems. The involvement of a sation learning curves, which exhibit fast and stable
NN in inverse calibration is used to transfer robot joint learning. The final RMS (root-mean-square) error of
compensation knowledge from the off-line, non-linear each joint compensation is below 0.1 °, which is the
optimisation to NN representations. The target of NN resolution of the robot joint transducers.
learning is a non-linear mapping between joint com- The implementation of the pi-sigma net is economi-
pensations and robot configurations (for a revolute- cal and efficient. The total adjustable weights used in
type Puma robot, the joint configuration is represented the inverse compensation net are 6 x 4 2 = 2 5 2 . For
by six joint angles, q = [oil and the joint compensa- parallel computation, only 1 trigonometric function
tions are 60i, (i= 1,2,...6). The first attempt at using call, 48 multiplications, and 42 additions are needed,
back-propagation learning networks experienced slow which is equivalent to about 100 floating-point addi-
learning and unsatisfactory learning accuracy, due to tions. Even when simulated on serial computers, the
the complex non-linear relationship between the joint NN inverse compensation requires only about 6 x 100 =
corrections and six-joint robot configurations. From the 600 floating-point addition-equivalent computations,
simplified analytic accuracy compensation models, 14'15 while one iteration of the N - R method requires 12
it can be seen that the compensation amounts are trigonometric function calls, 356 multiplications and
higher-order polynomials of sinusoidal functions of 268 additions, 17 which is equivalent to about 720
joint angles, with the polynomial coefficients being floating-point additions. For the inverse compensation
determined by the identified kinematic errors. problem, normally at least 2 iterations are needed for
Therefore, a network with a higher-order approxima- the N - R method to converge; hence a total compu-
tion capability will be desirable for this application. tation of 1440 floating-point additions are needed.
Ghosh and Shin x6 introduced a class of high-order As a rule of thumb, the larger the number of data
networks, the pi-sigma network. The pi-sigma points to be approximated, the larger the number of
network uses linear summing units in the hidden layer, adjustable connection weights that are required in the
and product units in the output layer, to incorporate network. A large number of network connection
the approximation capabilities of high-order networks weights implies a larger sized network. It is well-known
while greatly reducing network complexity. Therefore, that the training of a large-sized feedforward network is
the pi-sigma network has been employed here to exceedingly slow, and the residual training error is
construct a generic model to approximate inverse robot unacceptably large. Therefore, the feedforward
compensation. As shown in Fig. 3, a single pi-sigma NN-based calibration is only suitable for local calib-
network has been used for each compensation vector ration which has a relatively small number of training
component, with the same inputs of joint angles data points covering a small portion of robot work
encoded by sinusoidal functions. The product units space. Where a robotic application involves a large
without sigmoid functions are used in the output layer number of work points across the workspace (such as
so that the outputs are actually high-order polynomials path or trajectory control), a Hopfield continuous-
of sinusoidal functions of the joint angles. The order of valued NN architecture is appropriate to resolve the
the polynomials is equal to the unit number used in the inverse compensation problem. 18
88 X I A O L I N Z H O N G et al. : I N V E R S E R O B O T C A L I B R A T I O N

Joint 1 Compensation Learning Curve conditions of the network, which are determined by the
0.8 robot's nominal kinematic parameters and joint solu-
~" 0 . 7 - tions, the network can obtain global optimal solutions
in a few characteristic time constants of the neural
o 0.6- circuit, even in the robot configurations near singular-
0.5 .-J ity, where numerical approaches break down.
Hopfield and Tank 13 have shown that highly inter-
"~ 0.4 connected networks of simple analogue processors can
0.3 rapidly find local optimal solutions to difficult optimisa-
tion problems. Since joint compensations are only
o0 0.2 small perturbations around the nominal joint values,
the description below shows how the joint compensa-
o.1
tion problem can be rapidly solved given the initial
o.0 ! I I I conditions in the vicinity of the global optimums. In the
o lOO 200 300 400 500 residual error model (2), if the kinematic errors are
Epoches (X I0) zero and the controllable joint values, are variables,
then the linearized residual error e by perturbing the
controllable joint variables 6q around the nominal
Joint 2 Compensation Learning Curve values is:
0.35
e(6q) = Ax - J6q, (6)
0.30 where J is the Jacobian of the robot manipulator,
evaluated at the robot's nominal kinematic parameters,
"-" 0.25 and the joint values (k °, q0), Ax=f(k, qt°) give the
inaccuracy vector of the location of the robot's end-
N 0.20 effector predicated by the actual control model and the
nominal kinematic model.
0.15 The key to the application of Hopfield-type NNs is
the formulation of the network energy function. In this
O.lO ',-._._ application, the quadratic form of a robot's Cartesian
inaccuracy is constructed as a network energy function,
0.05 I I I I so that a decrease in the network's energy corresponds
0 100 200 300 400 500 to a decrease in the robot's positioning inaccuracy. It is
Epoches (X 10) desirable to have only small joint compensation values;
therefore a penalty term is added to the energy function
to ensure small outputs. The energy function for joint
Joint 3 Compensation Learning Curve
compensation is:
0.50
E = ½[e(Sq)] rQ[e(6q)] + ½6qrA6q, (7)

~o 0.40- ~ where A is a positive diagonal weight matrix for regula-

tion, and Q is a coefficient matrix defined as in (3).
~ 0.30-
Using the linear residual error model (6) in (7), and
expressing the network energy, in the standard form:
n m
~ 0.20-
ToSq,Sqj- EIjSqj+½ E Q,(Ax,)Z, (8)
i,j=l j=l i=l
~ 0.10- ~.,......~
where

0.00
0
I
100 200 300 400 500
i I I
T° = -
S=I
( Q'J~'J'J + ;~'6°)' d° =
{10if/-,
if i ~ej
Epoches (X 10)
Fig. 4. Learning curves for inverse compensation. where Qi is the i-th diagonal element of coefficient
matrix Q, 2i is the i-th diagonal element of coefficient
3.2. R e c u r r e n t H o p f i e l d N N a n d g l o b a l c o m p e n s a t i o n matrix A, and
In this section, the inverse compensation problem m

has been re-formulated such that a recurrent Hopfield

continuous-valued NN can be applied. Given the initial i=l
 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION 89

Table 3. Calibrationcompensationresults for a Puma robot (lengthin mm and anglesin degrees)

Before Kinematic Optimisation FeedforwardNN
compensation calibration compensation compensation
Position Orientation Position Orientation Position Orientation Position Orientation
Average 4.3707 2.5767 0.7095 1.0978 0.0021 0.1191 0.6474 0.4974
SD 0.8768 0.4075 0.4477 0.5145 0.0022 0.1033 0.3127 0.2828
Max 5.3814 3.2331 1.8724 2.2502 0.0119 0.4327 1.7311 1.1477

Tit and lj determine the network's connection weights
and input currents respectively, based on the nominal
kinematic model and parameters (Jacobian matrix).
The 6qj is the ]-th joint compensation, which corre-
sponds to the ]-th neuron state, n is the robot's DOF,
while m is the dimension of the robot's Cartesian space.
The energy function gradient with respect to the i-th
neuron state can be obtained from (8):
oe Ti,6qj + ~,
O(6q,) = -
The time evolution of the neuron states should follow
the opposite direction of the energy function gradient,
so the neuron circuit dynamics equation results as:
d(6q,) -[/-,li To6qi + I~ ,
dt \j=l
where gi is the i-th diagonal element of the positive
diagonal coefficient matrix/z which is chosen to ensure
the stability and the convergence speed of the circuit.
Given the initial condition of the neuron states (6qi -- O,
i = 1, 2, . . . , n), the above differential equation (10)
determines the neuron state trajectories, and hence the
joint compensation amounts (the stable states of the
neurons).
From (9) and (10), and using the chain rule of the
derivative, the time derivative of the energy function is
obtained:
dE -/.~i To6q~+
dt i=1 -j=l
which is always non-positive, implying that the network
dynamics always tends to minimise the network energy.
4. COMPENSATION RESULTS AND
EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATIONS
4.1. Local calibration by feedforward NN
The power of feedforward NNs is due largely to their
generalisation ability. Only 144 data points are ran-
domly chosen from the collected data set of 288 points
for NN training. The trained network can generalise
well in the calibrated area. Three statistical measures
(average error, standard deviation and maximum devi-
ation), are used to evaluate the robot calibration com-
pensation results. The results of using kinematic calib-
ration, optimisation inverse compensation and
NN-based inverse compensation are listed in Table 3,
based on 100 randomly-chosen test data points from
the whole data set. The compensated positions and
orientations are calculated using the compensated kine-
(9) matic model, and were then compared with the data
collected.
From Table 3 it can be seen that the NN accuracy
compensation can achieve an accuracy improvement
factor of about 10. The NN-based inverse compensa-
tion has more satisfactory results in terms of accuracy
and efficiency, compared with kinematic model-based
calibration. The optimisation compensation uses six
(10) controllable joint variables to compensate for the
Cartesian error at each configuration; therefore it can
achieve a compensated accuracy of almost zero as long
as the robot has enough DOF to move in each direction
in Cartesian space. The inverse compensation network
stores and interpolates the joint corrections from the
off-line optimisation procedure, and these can then be
used for on-line implementation of inverse compensa-
tion. Figure 5 shows the improvements in position and
orientation accuracy after using the NN inverse com-
pensation (sorted in ascending order for 100 randomly
chosen test points), compared with the results of the
optimisation approach. Not surprisingly, the NN
inverse compensation is less accurate than optimisation
compensation, due to the residual errors of the NN
learning.
(11)
Table 4 lists the experimental evaluation results of
joint compensations based on 12 test points across the
calibrated area. The positioning errors (expressed in x,
y, z components) before compensation are obtained by
measuring the positions of the robot's end-effector,
achieved by controlling the joint angles as recom-
mended by the robot controller. The positioning errors
after compensation are obtained by measuring the end-
effector positions achieved by controlling the joint
angles, updated by different compensation approaches.
The average position error (in length) decreased from
4.20 mm before compensation, to 1.52 mm after kine-
matic calibration, to 1.25 mm after optimisation com-
pensation and to 1.57 mm after the NN compensation.
The improvements in accuracy indicated by the experi-
90 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION

5 _ m,,,t~t[,l~t u'-' [] Before [] Before

Compen-
sation ~o sation
-- O

o After the
m 3
q NN Corn- = NN Com-
pensation .~ pensation

After Opt.
1
Compen-
sation
0
0 25 50 75 100 125 50 25 75 100 125
Test Points Test Points
Fig. 5. Accuracy improvement with inverse calibration.

mental results are less significant, compared with the
i m p r o v e m e n t shown by the simulation results. This can
be partially explained by the fact that the measure-
ments for calibration and the measurements for evalu-
ation were made at different times, and system error
may therefore have occurred in the measuring set-up.
The final residual errors for the evaluation points are
expected to be less if the joint compensations are
obtained using on-line location error measurements
during evaluation. Of course, robot repeatability
(which is limited by the robot controller) also contri-
buted to the final residual error. However, experimen-
tal results show that the NN approach can achieve the
same level of i m p r o v e m e n t in accuracy as that achieved
by numerical optimisation approaches, which are com-
putationally more expensive.
4.2. Global compensation by Hopfield network
To exemplify the efficiency and robustness of the
Hopfield neural-net compensation scheme for robot
global inverse compensation, its trajectory compensa-
tion, and the compensation near a robot singularity, are
c o m p a r e d with the numerical compensation algorithm
( N - R ) . Due to the difficulty of taking actual measure-
ments of the robot end-effector across the large volume
of the workspace using a co-ordinate measuring
machine, the end-effector location errors are computed
using the kinematic model of the robot based on the
identified kinematic parameters (Table 2).
The end-effector of the P U M A robot was pro-
g r a m m e d to execute a spiral trajectory specified by the
homogenous transformation in Cartesian space:
T= [nsa
where
n = ( - sin q~, cos q~, O)r,
s=a×n
a = [cos(~/4)cos(~), cos(~/4)sin(~), sin (~/4)) T
p = [ - 45 + 20 sin (~), 4.5 + 20 cos (q~), - 26 + 5xt] r
and
cp(t) = (x/4)t, 0~<t<5
position in cm.
The task points were specified at discrete points
along the trajectory with a cycle time of 25 ms. The
cycle time is demanding in terms of most of the numeri-
cal algorithms for on-line compensation. However, this
time is sufficient for the neural circuit to converge. The
settling time of the neural circuit is in the order of ms,
given the coefficients of Q as an identity matrix, A
equal to zero in equation (7),/~i = 10 6, and the initial
conditions of neuron states 6qi = 0, i = 1, 2 . . . . n in the
neuron dynamics equation (10). Figure 6 is the posi-
tioning error (in length) caused by kinematic errors
before and after one iteration of NN compensation
(one of the eight robot joint configurations-RIGHT

Table 4. Experimental evaluation of compensation results (in mm)

Before Kinematic Optimisation Feedforward NN
compensation calibration compensation compensation
Position error in length Position error in length Position error in length Position error in length
Average error 4.1994 1.5196 1.2504 1.5776
SD 1.0527 0.3894 0.1416 0.2972
Max 5.1482 2.0819 1.4631 1.9678
 X I A O L I N Z H O N G et al. : I N V E R S E R O B O T C A L I B R A T I O N 91

2.5 1"3

Compen-
4 ---
03 2
sation
?b
Before ~1.5 , , ......... < > ........

Compen- : ~ After
sation
......... ~). ........
=
. iO
I t
, g' tt ,
It t ,i
Compen-
t
After the e~ / ~ : ,~ sation
NN Corn- ~0.5 m : :.
pensation ~~ x'.~ After
o ?"-° , 0 - t t i Compen-
0 1 2 3 4 5 -I -0.5 0 0.5 I sation
Time in Trajectory (Seconds)
Joint 5 Values (RAD)
Fig. 6. Positioning error along the trajectory.
Fig. 8. Orientation compensationnear robot singulurity.

and A B O V E arm, and UP wrist-is selected), which

shows a significant improvement in accuracy along the 3
trajectory. ~-

:!
.... i - i r a
Next, the compensation near a robot singularity is 2.5 - The NN
examined. Let the robot joint configuration be 0 = [3d2, Joint
-:r/2, Jr/4, ~r/4, 05, 0] and allow only joint 5 to rotate: qg 2- Compen-
-~r/4 ~<05 ~<~d4. The robot will be in its wrist-singular sation
configuration when joint 5 is in the neighbourhood of = 1.5 -
zero. The P U M A wrist-singular configurations are "~
commonly used for some typical assembly operations, i 1- The N-R
Therefore robot singularity problems for certain types / ',, Joint
of robots cannot simply be avoided by avoiding the use r~ 0.5 - o Compen-
of singular configurations during the motion-planning .~ sation
process. 0
Figures 7 and 8 compare the effects of position and -1 -0.5 0 0.5
orientation compensation respectively near the robot Joint 5 Values (RAD)
singularity after one iteration compensation using the Fig. 9. Joint compensation amount near singularity.
NN and N - R methods. Figure 7 shows that the NN
compensation is stable near the robot singularity, while tageous to the NN method, since more often than not, a
the widely used numerical algorithm (N-R) fails to robot's absolute positional accuracy is more critical
converge. Figure 8 shows that both the N - R and NN than its orientation accuracy. In a case where more
methods can converge, but the N - R method has a accurate orientation is required, the coefficient matrix
smaller residual orientation error than the NN method Q in the network energy function (7) can be used to
after one iteration compensation. This is not disadvan- adjust the balance weight between the residual position
error and the orientation error.
r')m The joint compensations obtained by the NN and
Before numerical approaches are also displayed in Fig. 9
~ 1 IIFLII1 Compen- (length in radians). The joint compensations of the
sation
N - R method are too large to be feasible near singular-
ity, while the NN joint compensations using the NN
After
method are reasonably small for practical implemen-
2 tation. The large amount of joint compensation needed
the N-R
Compen- to compensate for small errors in workspace using the
~2 sation N - R method is highly undesirable, since the robot's
.......... C)........
joint limits might be exceeded, and the robot might
After collide with fixtures or other objects in the workspace
the NN during the joint-adjustment movements.
I -I I Compen- The recent work by Everett et a l ) 9 has highlighted
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 sation the importance of automatic singularity avoidance
Joint 5 Value (RAD) during the joint-compensation process. Compared with
Fig. 7. Position compensation near robot singularity. the approach used by Everett et a l ) 9 where the joint-
 XIAOLIN ZHONG et al. : INVERSE ROBOT CALIBRATION 93

AUTHORS' BIOGRAPHIES
Xiao-Lin Zhong received a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1986, and an M.Sc. degree in Robotics and Automation
in 1989 from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China. He was a major participant in the
Wuhan-I autonomous mobile robot system project, and was mainly responsible for the development of the microprocessor-
based control system and the integration of multi-sensor systems for robot navigation. He joined Shenzhen Sciences &
Industrial Park Corporation, Shenzhen, China, as an R&D engineer in 1989. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the
Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Software Engineering, Napier University, Edinburgh, U.K. His research
interests include autonomous robot calibration, motion planning and control, and artificial neural networks and their
application in intelligent manufacturing systems.
John M. Lewis received a B.Sc. degree in Engineering Science from Exeter University, U.K., in 1982. He joined Westland
Helicopters Ltd as a systems engineer, working on pilot decision support systems for rotor craft, and in 1984 the company
supported him through a Ph.D. programme in artificial intelligence at Edinburgh University. In 1987 he joined the
Department of Mechanical, Manufacturing and Software Engineering at Napier University, Edinburgh, where he is currently
a senior lecturer in Software Engineering. His research interests include autonomous robot calibration, real-time job
scheduling for flexible assembly systems, and distributed requirements gathering techniques.
Francis L. N-Ns~gy received a Ph.D. from the University of Salford, U.K. He came to England in 1956, and worked for
Epsylon Ltd and Vectron Research Laboratories. In 1964 he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering of Salford
University, where he taught postgraduate courses on servomechanisms and advanced robot design. He later became a
Professor at the IT-Institute of Salford University. He has published three books on robotics and solid-state control devices,
and more than 100 papers in automation and control applications. He holds a number of patents, and acts as a consultant in
industrial control and robotics. In 1993 he helped initiate the European Association for Research of Leg Robots (EARLR).
He is a Chartered Engineer (U.K.), a Fellow of the IEE and the IMA (U.K.) and a Senior Member of the IEEE.