MOSCOW, 24 Oct. SUSU engineers presented the first model of a small industrial robot that will help students and employees of manufacturing enterprises master special programming languages for controlling industrial robots, including foreign ones. This was reported by the university press service.
After some foreign companies producing industrial robots left the Russian market, domestic engineers were faced with the task of training specialists from industrial enterprises to effectively work on already implemented foreign automation tools and reprogram them if necessary.
Since 2020, employees of the Research and Production Institute «Educational Equipment and Technologies» of South Ural State University (SUSU) have been developing a model of an industrial robot that can be controlled using several programming languages and is intended primarily for the education sector.
The universal six-axis robot named Robin is controlled using proprietary software; it has the ability to write programs in the programming languages of leading brands of industrial robots. The robot has six degrees of mobility and is capable of working as a welder, loader or packer, depending on the type of tool.
““Each robot manufacturer has its own programming language. Due to the fact that the robot understands several languages, we can choose to work with the one that we know or want to learn,” explained Alexander Klepinin, an engineer at the NPI “Educational Equipment and Technologies” of SUSU.
According to him, the Robin robot can be controlled using the KUKA Robot Language, which is used to program German industrial robots that have been present on the Russian market for a very long time. The development also supports the programming languages RAPID Robot Language, Mitsubishi and others.
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«Foreign robots today are widely represented in domestic enterprises. Robots from different manufacturers are often used simultaneously in one production facility. With the help of our robot, a student or factory employee can learn all the programming languages of industrial robots, working with only one device, and then use the acquired skills on production,” noted Alexander Klepinin.
He also added that with the help of the robot, students can study other disciplines related to the basics of robotics and automation, as well as electric motors.
A prototype of the robot has already been assembled in metal and is functioning. It consists of six moving parts (axes), each of which is equipped with its own electric motor, necessary to move the axes in space. The robot's control system controls the operation of the electric motors and receives feedback on the execution of the command using encoders. The data received by the control system is reflected on the user's personal computer through a special application.
«The concept of industrial robots is that they can be used for different tasks. By themselves, they can only move in space and move working tools — these are either, for example, gripping devices for moving workpieces, or a welding torch for welding. And all the work performs a working tool. Our robot is universal because it, like any other industrial robot, can perform all these tasks,» said Alexander Klepinin.
Now engineers are conducting mechanical tests of the robot's electric motors and testing its kinematics , improve user control capabilities. In the near future, it will undergo thousands of hours of field testing, which will help identify and eliminate errors in its operation and flaws in its design.
«We plan to use the robot to train students at the SUSU Polytechnic Institute in the technology departments automated mechanical engineering; electric drive, mechatronics and electromechanics,” noted Alexey Sirotkin, director of the Research Institute “Educational Equipment and Technologies” of SUSU.
The authors of the development plan to improve it over time for practical use in real production conditions.