A robotic off-line programming system based on SolidWorks

It is well known that off-line programming (OLP) is an efficient control mode for industrial robots. However, OLP is not yet commonly and widely used in applications, since commercial OLP systems are very expensive, with prices even much higher than those of robotic systems themselves. Simple but effective OLP systems are desired, and such systems may be made based on other commonly used CAD systems. We have developed a robotic OLP system, which we called RobSim, based on SolidWorks and with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. RobSim is developed as an add-on tool for the commonly used CAD software SolidWorks. With this OLP system, an object can be made, imported or modified in the conventional mode in SolidWorks environment, and various trajectories for a robot can be easily and conveniently defined and modified in the same environment. Trajectory interposition, kinematic computation, dynamic and graphic simulation can be conducted. Finally executable codes can be generated for the robot to perform tasks. In this paper, the development of RobSim is demonstrated. Specifically, the architecture of RobSim, the method for extracting position and orientation from a pre-defined path on an object for the robot tool, and path transformation, are presented. Simulation and experiments are also conducted to verify the effectiveness of the OLP system.