A Novell Approach of Robot Programming by Combining Off-Line CAD-Data with On-Line Contour-Digitization

摘要

Robot offline programming software allows its user to swiftly define robot paths directly using the CAD drawings of a work-piece. On the contrary, definition of the robot end-effectors orientation through manual inputs (in a virtual environment) for every process-point along the robot path may prove to be very tedious and non-intuitive. This paper describes a technique (realized in form of a software) which can be utilized for the definition of the end effectors orientation along the robot path using a hand-held 3D-Digitizer. This is achieved by guiding a dummy end-effector along the work-piece contours while simultaneously recording its orientation using the digitization system. The recorded orientation profile is consecutively combined with process-points, out of the work-piece CADdata, to form poses. Using these poses, the movement instructions for the robot are generated. With this concept, it is thus possible to intuitively generate robot programs while preserving the path-accuracy derived from the work-piece CAD data.