On visual sensors for welding seam tracking based on laser structured light

Welding seam tracking is a key issue to welding automation. This paper designs a kind of visual sensor adopted laser structured light, based on study of different kind of seam tracking senor. And an images processing library is developed to extract features for different welding joints type, e. g. Vee and U - shaped joints, Step and Butt joints, welding for first time and multipass welding joints. Testing results validate the reliability and accuracy of the sensor. And the sensor is adaptive to welding seam tracking system.