Real-time simulation and visualization of robotic belt grinding processes.

Real time simulation and visualization are important for robot programmers to verify and optimize the path planning for the robotic belt grinding process. A new free-form surface representation based on discrete surfel element is developed to facilitate the system implementation, which exploits the advantage of the new development of point-based rendering technology in computer graphics. A local process model is integrated to calculate the material removal rate by considering the local geometry information and non-uniform force distribution. The final surface grinding error is easy to be assessed and visualized for quality evaluation. The experiments show that the simulation error is below 15%, even for a non-uniform contact under stable cutting conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]