New ways of user-oriented robot programming

The use of welding robots as a tool of the worker in the workshop of small and medium sized enterprises is a challenging task which has not really been solved. A national research project entitled “improved user-orientated programming of industrial robots” funded by the German BMBF (German Ministry of Research) tried to find solutions in this field. As a basis, new production concepts which emphasise human skills in relation to pure technical orientated solutions were developed and discussed. In a next step new hardware and software components were developed in order to give the worker the ability to interact in an easy way with the robot and to realise his production procedures in an optimised way. For example software tools for the preparation of the welding task (measurement of the tool centre point (TCP), cleaning of the nozzle), the programming of the robot (PC based off-line programming system, virtual programming device), optimisation of the welding process with respect to the practical experience of the welder (interactive welding shield with hand wheel functions) and process control were designed. In this paper some results developed at APS Mechatronik within the project are discussed