APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC PATH GENERATION FOR AN INDUSTRIAL ROBOT

摘要

An apparatus and method that allows a person who is not a skilled engineer, to quickly and easily generate target points and paths for an industrial robot performing work in a work cell. The apparatus comprises: a memory location (4) for storing a set of predefi ned workstation types, each workstation type including predefi ned movement paths includi ng target points, information on how to generate the target points based geometric parame- ters, and information on how to generate a parameter driven 3D geometric model of the workstation type, a graphical generator (8) generating a graphical user interface, displaying information about the predefined workstation types and allowing a user to select workstations and to enter values for geometric parame- ters for the selected workstations, a target generating module (10) calculating the positions of the target points of the selected workstations based on the workstation type and geometric pa¬ rameters, and a path generating module (12) generati ng paths for the selected workstations based on the workstation type and calculated positions of the target points.