Measurement for machines that move.
A robot is only as good as what you can prove about where it actually goes. Laser trackers are the ideal way to measure a robot accurately as it moves through 3D space, and the same instruments that verify a robot can become the heart of an automated measurement cell.
Automation without measurement is a guess you cannot audit.
Industry is buying robots and cobots at a pace it has not seen before, and a good share of that is landing in shops that have never run either. A robot will do the same thing all day without complaint. Whether that thing is what you wanted is a separate question, and it is a measurement question.
Before you automate
Somebody has to define what right looks like, in numbers, on the part. Automating a process nobody has characterized just produces the same wrong result faster.
While you commission
The controller reports where the robot thinks it is. An independent measurement shows where the tool actually went. Those are different numbers, and only one of them is checkable.
After it runs
Payload, temperature, and wear move a cell quietly. A robot that was right at commissioning is not automatically right in month nine.
A robot repeats. It doesn’t necessarily tell the truth.
A robot’s controller reports where the robot thinks it is, from joint encoders and a kinematic model that drifts from reality with payload, temperature, and wear. An independent measurement with a laser tracker shows where the tool actually is, and there are two ways to get it.
Pose by pose
The robot is stepped through a set of poses and the tracker measures each one at rest. This is how you establish pose accuracy and repeatability across the working envelope, and the data that feeds a kinematic calibration when the robot needs to be corrected, not just characterized.
Continuous, in motion
Specialized 6DoF targets let the tracker follow the robot as it moves, measuring continuous position and orientation along the path. That is where path accuracy, speed effects, corner rounding, and settling behavior show up, the things a static check never sees.
Where this pays.
Accepting or verifying a robot
Acceptance testing, periodic verification, and re-checks after a crash or relocation, measured independently of the controller that is being judged.
Path-critical processes
Welding, drilling, dispensing, machining, and layup live or die on path accuracy under real payload and speed, not repeatability on the datasheet.
Automated measurement
A robot carrying a scanner turns inspection into an in-line process. The cell is only as good as the measurement plan behind it.
Commissioning the cell
Robot, tooling, fixtures, and part all need to live in one coordinate system. Tracker measurement is how the cell gets tied together and proven.
One conversation, the right depth of help.
Robotics work ranges from a measurement plan to a full integration. The nSIGHT family covers that range without you having to sort out who does what.
The independent advice
Independent advice on what to measure, which method fits, and what the data has to prove. We define the approach behind robot verification and automated measurement before anyone writes a line of automation.
Start the conversation→The measurement itself
When it is time to put a tracker on your floor, our sister division performs the work: static and dynamic robot measurement, run on your parts and your schedule.
Visit nSIGHT Metrology Services↗Automation & integrator depth
When a measurement task repeats, it should run itself. Through the Network we deliver measurement automation, from the Measurement Plan scripting behind a repeating task (simple or complex) to a full automated inspection cell, plus integrator-level robotics consulting when the job goes deeper.
About the Network→Putting a robot to work, or making one prove itself?
Tell us what the robot has to do and what the data has to show. We’ll scope the work, from a one-time verification to automation that runs the measurement every day.
Not sure yet? Book a free 20-minute fit call. We’ll tell you honestly if you don’t need us.