Offline Kinematics Simulation of 6-DOF Welding Robot

Since the advent of the robots, they are widely applied in many areas of industry all over the world. With the advancement of the robot, many new research theories and technologies are developed on it. The single one impacted much more quickly and significantly is the application of computer offline simulation technology nowadays. Based on some relevant theories of robot, this paper suggests a new approach toward the offline research for the industrial robot. This method combines three advanced softwares with each playing an important role and making the best of their advantages respectively. It built a 3-D model for a 6-DOF welding robot in SolidWorks, worked out the simulation results of expected processing trajectory planning for the six links in MATLAB, then verified the trajectory simulation results and simulated the motion further in ADAMS. The kinematics simulation produced the processing motion course and relevant kinematics curves. The results indicate that the manipulator could implement the welding process according to the expected trajectory successfully and the total welding motion process and the poses of the robot just in time could be observed intuitively and dynamically. Also, this simulation lays a foundation for other virtual offline kinematics researches on robot by using relevant computer softwares without the actual robot.