Pro­gram­ming and sim­u­la­tion of robot appli­ca­tions inde­pen­dently of manufacturers

With the Robot Pro­gram­ming Suite, ZF can not only pro­gram but also sim­u­late appli­ca­tions, thus sav­ing time and costs. Jonas Arnold explains, “The visu­al­iza­tion allows us to iden­tify poten­tial prob­lems in advance. This already starts with the spa­tial con­di­tions. Does the avail­able space even offer suf­fi­cient free­dom of movement?”

In addi­tion, when using col­lab­o­ra­tive robots, spe­cial stan­dards must met in order to ensure the safety of human-robot col­lab­o­ra­tion. Arnold explains, “We must eval­u­ate in advance, for exam­ple, where col­li­sions between humans and robots could be pos­si­ble. Can the robot arm reach head height? Are there pos­si­ble clamp­ing points? In order to ensure safety, we have to com­ply with force as well as pres­sure val­ues and limit the speed of the robot’s move­ments. Dur­ing the grip­ping process, we must allow for inac­cu­ra­cies that cause time delays. We can assess all of this more eas­ily by sim­u­lat­ing it with the Robot Pro­gram­ming Suite.”

In addi­tion, ZF also had some automa­tion tasks for which they worked out good solu­tions for the imple­men­ta­tion of the robot pro­gram together with the ArtiMinds project team. Arnold praises the coop­er­a­tion and close col­lab­o­ra­tion, “At ArtiMinds we always find open ears and help­ful­ness. In this way a beau­ti­ful and sta­ble part­ner­ship has devel­oped between us.”