Ask the Experts
Published on: 03/23/2009
Last Reply on: 03/23/2009
Category: Material Handling
Technology: Vision
I have a robot to pick up material from conveyor. Without getting conveyor tracking software, is it possible to connect the encoder signals to the robot controller directly or through any other means in such a way that robot understands? Please help.
Most robot controllers allow you to directly connect encoder inputs. Some times this does require an optional input card in the controller. It is also possible to connect the encoder to a device such as a PLC which the robot controller can then communicate with to get the data, but this is not as common as connecting the encoder directly to the robot controller.
Jim Cook from Stäubli Robotics | 03/23/2009
Typically the information for the robot to automatically offset the position requires some type of link to the motion planner internal to the robot. Most robots have the ability to offset a programmed point with values or a range of values but they usually are not “Dynamic” – meaning they keep updating in real-time unless some special hardware/software combination is enabled. Can you give some more details of what you are trying to accomplish and with what sensors/tools are you trying to do it with? What kind of robot is it, how fast is the conveyor moving, does it change speed, and does it stop? Robin Schmidt – ABB robin.r.schmidt@us.abb.com
Robin Schmidt from ABB Inc. | 03/23/2009