Heritage Institute of Technology

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Advanced Manufacturing Technology Laboratory (MECH 4211)

Expt. No. : MECH 4211/8-10 Date:

Experiment: Study of six-axis controlled pick and place robot

Objective: 1. To study various parts and components, including brief history and definition of robot.
2. To learn how to actuate robot arm with Versatile Assembly Language (VAL3).

Theory:

‘Robot’ derives from the Czech ‘robota,’ meaning forced labor, and ‘robotnik,’ a slave or servant. Isaac
Asimov, the ingenious science fiction author, is generally credited with the popularization of the term
‘robotics.’ He used it in 1941 to describe the study of robots and predicted the rise of a powerful robot industry.
The term was first published in his short story ‘Runaround’ in 1942, and then in 1950 in the collection I, Robot,
which also introduced his famous Three Laws of Robotics. Japan was the first country to identify robot
production as a major strategic industry. Several policies, including standardization, were introduced to
popularize robot utilization in manufacturing. The Japanese Electric Machinery Law defined ‘industrial robot’
in 1971, and additional terminology for industrial robots was standardized in 1979 under the Japanese Industrial
Standards (JIS). Other countries followed with national standards, and in 1988 the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) established standards for manipulating industrial robots operated in a manufacturing
environment (ISO standard 8373). Most standards and definitions emphasize the flexibility and versatility of
‘multipurpose industrial robots.’ In contrast, the JIS also included ‘dedicated industrial robots’ until 2000.

Japanese Electric Machinery Law:

The Japanese Electric Machinery Law (1971) defines an industrial robot as an all purpose machine, equipped
with a memory device and a terminal device (end-effector), capable of rotation and of replacing human labor by
the automatic performance of movements.

Japan Robot Association (JARA):

JARA uses a broad classification of industrial robots based on the programming or control method used,
formalizing it in the Japanese Industrial Standard JIS B0134:1979, No. 2110–2140. The classes are listed in
Table 1.2 (McIntyre, 1997).

American National Standards Institute (ANSI) & Robotic Industries Association (RIA):

The ANSI adopted RIA robot standards and defines an industrial robot as “a reprogrammable, multifunctional
manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through various programmed
motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.”

International Organization for Standardization (ISO):

The international standard ISO 8373:1994, originally published in 1988, includes the following definitions
related to industrial robots.

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“A manipulating industrial robot is an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose, manipulator
programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial
automation applications. Note: The robot includes the manipulator (including actuators) and the control system
(hardware and software).” (ISO: 8373, No.2.6).

A robot system is a “system comprising robot, end-effector, any equipment, devices, or sensors required for the
robot to perform its task, and any communication interface that is operating and monitoring the robot,
equipment, or sensors, as far as these peripheral devices are supervised by the robot control system.” (ISO:8373
, No.2.14).

Standard robot types:

The main characteristics of industrial robots are

 Number of axes of motion
 Kinematic structure
 Work envelope
 Maximum payload
 Maximum speed
 Accuracy
 Drive train (actuators, remote vs. direct-drive).

Eight robot types are defined in the ISO standard 8373:1994 based on their kinematic structure and the
coordinate frame that spans the workspace: Cartesian robots, cylindrical robots, spherical (or polar) robots,
pendular robots, articulated (or anthropomorphic) robots, SCARA robots, spine robots, and parallel robots. The
preferred kinematic structure of industrial robots depends on the application at hand and is influenced by the
required motion, payload, end-effector orientation, and other factors.

Fig.1 Schematic diagram of SCARA and End Gripper of Robot

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To design a robot properly, designer should use geometric analysis, forward/reverse kinematic analysis and
forward/reverse dynamic analysis. Geometric analysis is required to design various link parameters, kinematic analysis is
required to calculate velocity and acceleration of each link and dynamic analysis is required to measure torque required
to actuate each joint. Usually, velocity, acceleration of links, forces required for joints are calculated through series of
matrix multiplications. In robot analysis, “forward’ refers the situation where exact position of the end gripper is not
known but the location and the orientation of each joint is known prior to calculation. “Reverse or backward” refers the
situation where position of the end gripper is known but exact location and orientation of each joint is unknown. Hence,
it is a very difficult and computer tedious task. Several algorithms exist to resolve backward matrix calculation of robot.

Robotics is an interdisciplinary field where computer scientist, electronics engineer, electrical engineer and mechanical
engineer are worked together.

Fig.2 Concept of robot workspace (Top View of Stäubli Robot)

Robot programming language:

The earliest and most widespread method of programming robots involves manually moving the robot to each
desired position, and recording the internal joint coordinates corresponding to that position. In addition,
operations such as closing the gripper or activating a welding gun are specified at some of these positions. The
resulting “program” is a sequence of vectors of joint coordinates plus activation signals for external equipment.
Such a program is executed by moving the robot through the specified sequence of joint coordinates and issuing
the indicated signals. This method of robot programming is usually known as teaching by showing. Robot
guiding is a programming method which is simple to use and to implement. Because guiding can be
implemented without a general-purpose computer, it was in widespread use for many years before it was cost-
effective to incorporate computers into industrial robots. Programming by guiding has some important
limitations, however, particularly regarding the use of sensors. During guiding, the programmer specifies a
single execution sequence for the robot; there are no-loops, conditionals, or computations. This is adequate for
some applications, such as spot welding, painting, and simple materials handling. In other applications,
however, such as mechanical assembly and inspection, one needs to specify the desired action of the robot in
response to sensory input, data retrieval, or computation. In these cases, robot programming requires the
capabilities of a general-purpose computer programming language.

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Some robot systems provide computer programming languages with commands to access sensors and to specify
robot motions, known as explicit or robot-level languages. The key advantage of robot-level languages is that
they enable the data from external sensors, such as vision and force, to be used in modifying the robot’s
motions. Through sensing, robots can cope with a greater degree of uncertainty in the position of external
objects, thereby increasing their range of application. The key drawback of robot-level programming languages,
relative to guiding, is that they require the robot programmer to be expert in computer programming and in the
design of sensor-based motion strategies. Hence, robot level languages are not accessible to the typical worker
on the factory floor. Many recent approaches to robot programming seek to provide the power of robot-level
languages without requiring programming expertise. One approach is to extend the basic philosophy of guiding
to include decision-making based on sensing. Another approach, known as task-level programming, requires
specifying goals for the positions of objects, rather than the motions of the robot needed to achieve those goals.
In particular, task-level specifications meant to be completely robot-independent; no positions or paths that
depend on the robot geometry or kinematics are specified by the user. Task level programming systems require
complete geometric models of the environment and of the robot as input; for this reason, they are also referred
to as world-modeling systems. Task-level programming is still in the research stage, in contrast to guiding and
robot-level programming which have reached the commercial stage.

VAL 3 CODE:

A brief introduction to VAL 3 is given below:

 Home: Move robot to home position. This is essential to start any experiment.
 Move P P_10 : Move robot to a particular co-ordinate mentioned at serial no 10 in the program code.
This is Point-to-Point movement.
 Move P_ Q_ : This is pick and place circle. Robot will pick up the object from point ‘P’ and place it at
point ‘Q’. Co-ordinates of P and Q should be mentioned clearly in the program code. Only the serial
number corresponding to co-ordinate of P and Q should be mentioned after P and Q in the code.
 Gripper Open/Close: It is required to test the actuation of gripper. Prior to that pneumatic system
should be started. Working pressure of pneumatic system should be fixed at 2.6 bar.

Please refer robot manual for more commands. Prior to any experiment robot should be returned to home position
then by ‘teach pendant’ reach of robot should be checked and corresponding position of each joint should be recorded
to the program. For optimization of path to accomplish the task in shortest possible time a separate MatLab program
could be prepared with the co-ordinate of each point of the trajectory and any heuristic method could be used to solve
it.

Experiment (To be filled by the students) :

Fix the pick and place position and write a program in VAL 3 to accomplish the task.

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Advantages of Robot application: (To be filled by the students)

Conclusion (Discuss error, if any with reason):

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