Roboguide Line Tracking

[Suk Harian]

Stopthe robot with Hold or by turning on the Pendant Enable, and stop the conveyor motion using the Conveyor Toolbar (not stopping the simulation, because that will reset the conveyor position and the Tracking).

This works, although it's a bit kludgy. The issue I haven't been able to overcome is that I can't step through the Tracking program. If I stop the robot and conveyor during the Tracking program, as described above, I can add or Touchup points, but any attempt to run one of the points using the virtual pendant throws a fault and resets the simulation as if I'd hit the Abort button in the Simulation Run Panel.

As you can imagine, this makes it very hard to test my Tracking Points at different conveyor positions. So far, the only way I can test the tracking program is in full auto, or not at all. On a real-world robot, if I stop the program and conveyor partway through a Tracking program, I can run to the various Tracking Points and see where they end up, before doing touch-ups, and I'd like to do the same in RG.

That sounds horrible. It should be a lot easier that that. You should be able to do tracking and teaching of a tracking path in roboguide's not sim mode. I've done dozens of tracking simulations, and never had to resort to that.

I'm trying out simulating a conveyor in Roboguide, complete with parts, line-tracking and pick and place. I've followed the steps in the Roboguide help (under 'Conveyor Tracking with Roboguide'), and got a conveyor going with parts and can start and stop everything using the conveyor toolbar.

After writing a simple tracking program and testing it (again using the conveyor toolbar) I think I got everything in place (tracking works as I expect it to work), but am facing difficulties getting the simulated conveyor to give me a proper signal on the part detect switch (which I've configured as being on DI[1]. No tracking queues yet).

I haven't tried it since maybe V7 Rev D so I don't know if they've fixed it, but my understanding was that line tracking never fully worked in HandlingPro. The guy I talked to at FANUC said that they just use PickPRO when they want to simulate line tracking, even if it's just one robot.

A way around this, I've found, is to use LINECOUNT and SETTRIG commands to reset the line tracking frame. You can then throw those into a program in a macro and have it trigger off of a digital input.

From the Roboguide help I got the impression that the simulation should take care of triggering the part detect, based on the position of the sensor (in the tracking schedule) and the position of the part(s).

If you are comfortable with UFRAMEs andUTOOLs, youshould catch on to line tracking quickly. A tracking frame is reallyjust a standard UFRAME that moves as an encoder signal changes. Themost common use is tracking a conveyor belt. You mount an encoder to oneof the axes or use a friction wheel to get feedback when the belt moves.You then sync up your tracking program with some external condition(maybe a part passes a photoeye), and the robot then moves along withthe conveyor relative to that trigger.

You jog the target to where the robot can reach it. (The target justhappens to be a 100mm cube right in the middle of the conveyor, and youalso taught the tracking frame in the middle of the conveyor.) If youteach a point at the center of the top cube face, what will thecomponents be?

When used in combination with iRVision, iRPickTool can do visual tracking, conduct quality control checks, read barcodes and, depending on how many cameras are used, manage different conveyor widths.

iRPickTool supports everything from the very simplest line setup to multiple, circular and highly sophisticated layouts. Nevertheless, changing setups is easy thanks to remote modelling using FANUC ROBOGUIDE's iRPickPRO tool and ready-to-use program recipes.

What I'm trying to do is to make a box go forward above the robot. The robot should follow the box with the gripper and than pick it up and place it on a pallet.

What it does now is that the box just teleports to the not-following robot. I reckon that it's due to me just teaching points not telling him to follow and then pick-up/place.

I was given the task to simulate a slowly moving car above a stationary robot. When the car reaches the robot's work space

it should start puting parts into the car's undercarriage while the car is still moving. I managed to make the car move, however the parts just

teleport into the undercarriage. I guess it's because I just recorded the points with ''simulation program'' and did not define any tracking or anything whatsoever.

I might add that the car is moving due to machine1 link1 motion tab not due to conveyor toolbar since I cannot find it anywhere even though I did

the step by step line tracking set up described in the HELP tab.

Your question "So my cry for help is: How do I make the robot's gripper to follow the box and then pick/place the box? " does not have a simple one line answer.

You basically are asking somebody to write a manual for you as an answer

Specifically, use the seach, and look for "Line Tracking", once you find that, select the "General procedure for setting up a line tracking workcell" option. It goes over it in detail, and is how I learned to do it.

So, I did everything as descibed in help tab under "General procedure for setting up a line tracking workcell". I got to the point where I have to write the

TP program. When I record a couple of points and then hit start simulation I get the '' TRACK-001 track jnt move no allowed'' error message.

Whenever you make a simulation program via the navigation tree, a copy of it is loaded into the controller. When called from a .tp program, it will run what is in your sim program. Sim only commands will appear as remarks.

I typically do this when I need to do pick and place animations, or change the viewpoint. I'll create small sim programs, such as pick from fixture part 1 with gripper 1, and call them from tp programs where appropriate..

Thanks.

I managed to make a test sim program. I assigned it a tracking schedule through the TP. When I use the conveyor quickbar and move the conveyor forward or backward the thought points and traces move with the conveyor. However when I hit play simulation the part on the conveyor jumps forward by alot and the robot does not move at all. There is no TRAK error message.

I guess there is a detect problem? I filled in the detect distance and the upstream and downstream border fields.

Edit: I just found out that I can add more than the ''point'' and ''touchup'' stuff.

So here is what's happening. I created the conveyor tracking cell as described in the help tab. I made a sim program then I created TP tracking program that has those two lines you

gave me. After that the TP program calls the sim program. I saved, cold started, hit play and the robot just does its normal thing, completely ignoring the moving car above. No tracking not even remotely close to it.

Edit 2 :I asked fanuc for line tracking manual, it's not for roboguide but for the real robot. There is a chapter on programming. They suggest writing a non-tracking ''JOB'' that calls the tracking program. I did what they asked and I get the TRAK error message. So I flipped the roles - JOB is a tracking program that calls a non-tracking program with thought points. Now I don't get the error but there is no tracking, it just goes through the non-tracking program. I reckon the problem is with the detect switch.

IM HAVING A LOT OF PROBLEMS IN LINE TRACKING. THIS HAS TURNED OUT TO BE THE BANE OF MY EXISTANCE. THERE IS NOT A LOT OF MATERIAL AVAILABLE OUT THERE AND THE WHOLE THING HAS TURNED OUT TO BE A GIANT PAIN.

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