Development of an integrated laser sensors based measurement system for large-scale components automated assembly application

In the field of precision docking or assembly of large scale, the orientation and position measurement system is quite demanding. This paper proposes a long-range measuring system with the combination of low-cost tilt sensor and laser sensors to achieve orientation and position deviation during the process of docking in the outdoor environment. The measuring principle and the system construction of the integrated system are introduced in detail. Subsequently, the geometric measurement model for each assembly stage is established. The measurement system is dividing the whole measuring process into six major alignment steps to complete the automated assembly task. Then, the proposed measuring system is applied to an automated antenna assembly system to demonstrate its effectiveness in large-scale measurement. Validation experiments were performed and the preliminary result shows that the proposed system could achieve high efficiency and accuracy for large volume components automated assembly. Our main contribution is developing a new orientation and position measuring method for 6-DOF automated assembly in the outdoor environment and proposing a new approach to reduce the errors in each direction based on the step-by-step adjustment, which provides a new idea for docking and assembly in complex environment.