Machine vision for finding a joint to guide a welding robot

This report contains a description on how it is possible to guide a robot along an edge, by using a camera mounted on the robot. If stereo matching is used to calculate 3Dcoordinates of an object or an edge, it requires two images from different known positions and orientations to calculate where it is. In the image analysis in this project, the Canny edge filter has been used. The result from the filter is not useful directly, because it finds too many edges and it misses some pixels. The Canny edge result must be sorted and finally filled up before the final calculations can be started. This additional work with the image decreases unfortunately the accuracy in the calculations. The accuracy is estimated through comparison between measured coordinates of the edge using a coordinate measuring machine and the calculated coordinates. There is a deviation of up to three mm in the calculated edge. The camera calibration has been described in earlier thesis so it is not mentioned in this report, although it is a prerequisite of this project