COMPUTER ASSISTED TEACHING ARRANGEMENT FOR CONVEYOR LINE OPERATION

摘要

COMPUTER ASSISTED TEACHING ARRANGEMENT FOR CONVEYOR LINE OPERATION A programmable manipulator having an arm which is movable in a plurality of axes and encoder apparatus for the axes operative to develop position signals corresponding to the actual position of the arm is provided adjacent a workpiece moving along a predetermined path, a conveyor for example, to perform a series of programmed operations on the workpiece. The programmable manipulator is provided with teachprogramming apparatus for moving the arm during an initial teaching operation to different positions of the stationary workpiece corresponding to the desired series of operations of the manipulator relative to the stationary workpiece. Further, apparatus is provided for calculating digital representations during the teaching operation representing the positions of the arm accounting for the projected workpiece movement and corresponding to the initial teaching positions relative to the workpiece. The programmable manipulator then stores the calculated digital representations for use in controlling movement of the arm during playback with a moving workpiece. The manipulator control electronics is provided with a variable duration interpolation period unit which is effective to maintain the manipulator in synchronism with the conveyor and to achieve substantially constant velocity in a continuous path mode over the program steps by dividing the recorded conveyor positional signals for successive steps into a predetermined number of increments and utilizing the interpolated increments as artificial command signals. A velocity mode constant is also calculated and recorded during the teach mode and utilized in playback to generate velocity command signals to control the manipulator. -ii-