Erika Ottaviano, Marco Ceccarelli, Maria Toti and Carolina Avila Carrasco

Abstract:
In this paper we present the design and operation of CATRASYS (Cassino Tracking System), a wire tracking system which has been designed and built at the Laboratory of Robotics and Mechatronics in Cassino. CATRASYS is capable of measuring large displacements and orientation variations of complex movable multi-body systems. The measuring principle is based on trilateration technique, which has been properly formulated for an easy use of CATRASYS. The basic performance and feasibility of CATRASYS have been checked through an error analysis and experimental results. In particular, a suitable novel approach for the determination of the measuring error is presented in this paper and examples are reported. Workspace evaluation of industrial type robots is presented and discussed as a practical application of CATRASYS: it can be considered as a novel experimental evaluation of workspace performances of robots.

Keywords: experimental robotics, wire systems, robot workspace, experimental validation