Abstract
A CCD camera with a laser stripe was applied to realized the automatic weld seam tracking. The 3-dimensional information obtained from the vision system made it possible to generate the weld torch path. The adaptive Hough transformation was used to extract laser stripes an to obtain specific weld points. It takes relatively long time to process image on-line control using the basic control using the basic Hough transformation, but it has a tendency of robustness over the noises such as spatter. For this reason, it was complemented with adaptive Hough transformation to have an on-line processing ability for scanning specific weld points. The dead zone, where the sensing of weld line is impossible, was eliminated by rotating the camera with its rotating axis centered at the weld torch. When weld lines were detected, the camera angle was controlled in order to get the minimum image data for sensing of weld lines. Consequently, the image processing time was reduced.