Key Technologies and Trends of Active Robotic 3-D Measurement in Intelligent Manufacturing

In the field of intelligent manufacturing, the robot are an important part of modern manufacturing systems, e.g., automated factories and smart factories. The active 3-D measurement system uses the robot as the carrier of the 3-D measurement equipment, which significantly improves the efficiency and intelligence. Especially, it provides a new solution for the flexible measurement of complex components. Based on the key technologies of active robotic 3-D measurement, the methods of 3-D imaging, 3-D point cloud processing, and robot planning and control are systematically reviewed in this article. In the aspect of 3-D imaging, the basic principle and application range of different imaging methods are summarized. In terms of 3-D point cloud processing, the functions of point cloud feature extraction, feature matching, point cloud registration and pose estimation in the measurement process are analyzed in detail, and the related methods of these four kinds of technologies are summarized. For robot planning and control, the correlation and function of viewpoint planning, task allocation, trajectory planning, motion control, and other technologies in the framework of active robotic measurement are sorted out. Finally, the typical application of robot measurement technology is introduced, and the future development trend is discussed.