Fixture-based industrial robot calibration for silicon wafer handling

1 This work was supported in part by Adept Technology, Inc. and 2000 California State MICRO Grant 00-032. 4 Sr. automation engineer, TMG, Intel Corp., 2501 NW 229 Street, Hillsboro, OR 97124. Former postdoctoral researcher in ALPHA Lab. Abstract Semiconductor manufacturing industry requires highly accurate robot operation with short downtime. We develop a fast, low cost and easy-to-operate calibration system for wafer-handling robots. The system is defined by a fixture and a simple compensation algorithm. Given robot repeatability, endeffector uncertainties, and the tolerance requirements of wafer placement points, we derive fixture design and placement specifications based on (1) worst-case and (2) statistical tolerance models. We verify our resultant design by physical experiments in a factory-floor environment.