Grain-Adaptive Robotic Wood Planer

Robot Control

Feed rate 1.0 m/s

Cut depth 1.5 mm

Blade skew (fixed mode) 0°

Live Readouts

Local grain angle

0.0°

Blade angle

0.0°

Tear-out risk

Surface quality

100%

How it works

Wood grain is not straight — it follows a wavy fiber path along the board. At position x the local grain angle is the slope of that path:

y(x)  = A · sin(2πx/T + φ)
θ_g(x) = atan( dy/dx ) = atan( A·(2π/T)·cos(2πx/T + φ) )

Cutting produces tear-out when the blade's edge is misaligned with the local fiber direction — the further the mismatch angle Δθ = θ_blade − θ_g is from zero, the more fibers get levered up and snapped instead of sliced cleanly:

Risk(Δθ) = Risk_max · sin²(Δθ) · (depth / depth_ref)

Adaptive mode — a simulated vision head scans a short distance ahead of the blade, measures θ_g(x) at the upcoming cut point, and servos the blade skew to match it, keeping Δθ ≈ 0 and risk low across the whole pass.
Fixed mode — the blade holds one manually-set skew angle regardless of grain; risk swings high every time the wavy grain crosses that fixed angle.
Feed rate controls how fast the head sweeps end to end; cut depth scales how costly a mismatch is (deeper cuts amplify tear-out); the board's grain wavelength/amplitude/phase are re-randomized by "New board".
Splinter marks (orange/red) appear on the board where risk was high during that pass; smooth pale streaks mark clean, well-aligned cuts. Surface quality is a running average of (100 − risk) over the recent pass.

Real robotic planers and CNC jointers use exactly this loop — a camera or laser profilometer reads grain direction just ahead of the cutter, and the spindle head yaws in real time to track it, which is how automated wood-processing lines hold consistent surface quality across natural, non-uniform material.

Grain fiber lines Tear-out / splinter Clean cut

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