Off-line teaching method for a robot

Robots – Counterbalance

Patent

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Details

395 86, 395 97, 901 2, G05B 1904

Patent

active

056689306

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to an off-line teaching method for an industrial robot which operates according to a given teaching program, and more particularly to an off-line teaching method in which a desired posture of the robot is maintained even if any bent portion (a junction between two adjacent straight line segments or a corner portion) is included in an operation line on an object of an operation such as deburring.


DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART

In performing an off-line teaching of a robot for effecting an operation such as deburring, it is common, using a personal computer or a work station, to repeatedly execute the steps of: displaying the layout of a robot and an object of operation (workpiece) on a display screen; setting necessary plural number of teaching points necessary for the robot to take the positions and postures suited for the operation, teaching a robot position (the position of distal end of its tool) when the distal end of the tool is placed to coincide with each teaching point on the display screen, and determining an optimum posture of the robot (posture of the tool) for each teaching point.
There is another applicable teaching method which comprises: outputting CAD data of the object of operation as X-Y coordinate data; determining necessary values for defining the posture of the robot after reviewing the outputted data; and manually inputting the determined values through the teaching operation panel (teaching pendant).
However, the above conventional teaching methods require a number of steps such as bringing the tool tip to coincide with the predetermined teaching points on the display screen and setting the robot posture, determining values for defining the robot posture, and manually inputting the teaching data, thereby suffering a problem that the teaching operation is not of satisfactory efficiency.
It is not unusual that the teaching points amount to several hundreds in a teaching operation for deburring, and the necessary programs tends to increase as the demand for the diversified small-lot production increases. Thus, as long as the conventional teaching method is employed, it is inevitable that the time and labor necessary for overall teaching operation increases to reduce the merit of the robot as a laborsaving means.
In determining the robot posture at each of the teaching points including air-cut points, it is necessary to provide a scheme for preventing the robot from being overloaded due to an abrupt change of the robot posture during movement. In the conventional teaching methods, however, there is a possibility of teaching inappropriate posture to the robot due to the lack of such a scheme.
An off-line teaching method for overcoming the above problems in the conventional methods has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-59463 (1993). This off-line teaching method is applicable in a case where an operation line on the object of operation consists of the combination of straight-lines and circular-arcs, and the information containing the coordinate data which represent the operation line defined by connecting any number of straight-line elements and circular-arc elements on a plane is prepared in a form available for the data processing means (e.g. CAD data). The off-line teaching is executed with the data processing means by identifying the type of path environment at each junction (identifications of an end point of straight line segment, an intermediate or end point of circular-arc, etc.); defining necessary air-cut points; assigning the information relating to the type of path environment and trajectory of robot to each junction and air-cut point, and determining the position and posture of the robot based on the assigned information and the conditions selected in consideration of relative position of the operation line to the robot trajectory (ex. whether the operation line is on the left or right of the robot trajectory).
Also, another off-line teaching method is proposed in Japanese Patent Application No. 5-89511

REFERENCES:
patent: 4967125 (1990-10-01), Hara
patent: 5053976 (1991-10-01), Nose et al.
patent: 5327057 (1994-07-01), Kishi et al.
patent: 5416716 (1995-05-01), Zeman et al.

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