A laser tracking robot-performance calibration system using ball-seated bearing mechanisms and a spherically shaped cat’s-eye retroreflector

A new robot-performance calibration system based on tracking multilaser trilateration has been developed. To realize 1 μm coordinate accuracy, a beam-deflecting tracking mechanism with both a ball-seated bearing and a spherically shaped cat’s eye retroreflector whose refractive index is 2.0 has been developed. The coordinate error and the repeatability of a commercial industrial robot have been verified by the system we developed in a two-dimensional plane.