Programmable manipulator or industrial robot - has duplicate manually operated manipulator to establish position data points during programming

摘要

A robotic manipulator for either point to point or continuous path operation uses a duplicate manipulator as a teaching aid for programming the system. Both the programming unit and the robot manipulator have similar kinematic configurations. The programme control unit can be plugged into the main machine controller and an operator used to take the robot through the required motion cycle. Values from position transducers on both systems are multiplexed to comparator stages and finally into memory when the complete cycle has been entered the programming unit may be removed and the manipulator operated using the stored data.