Transformation of robotic workcells to digital twins

There is a growing demand for adaptive, off-line programmed robotic cells that can eliminate the laborious and time-consuming on-line programming work. Motivated by industrial requests, the paper proposes a design approach that transforms the already existing physical workcells to parametric digital twins. By improving twin closeness through multi-level calibration methods, an accurate digital twin of the as-built cell can be established, in which the sufficient accuracy of the off-line planned robotic operations is ensured. The approach is presented through the design of a belt grinding and polishing robotic cell for a cast aluminium workpiece in a real industrial scenario.