High accuracy positioning system implements robotic applications with guaranteed placement accuracy

Placement accuracy in automated production equipment has been a problem since the first automated machine assembled a product on a manufacturing line at the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the demand for machine accuracy has steadily increased since. Adept Technology, Inc. has developed an accuracy enabling software and hardware system called the High Accuracy Position System (HPS). Adept introduced the first generation of HPS in 1984, for precision assembly of through‐hole components on printed circuit boards. The HPS system provides a method whereby a robot accuracy map, a database of positional errors, is determined in the region of the assembly process. This accuracy map then provides a data resource to offset the computed assembly locations during production and compensates appropriately for any imperfections in the physical mechanism. The HPS system also includes thermal and backlash compensation to account for some of the largest error producing factors in the system.