Pick position updating based on product dimensions + how to control offsets?

Robot Programming
1

Setup
I have a simple test setup with:

  1. Feeder outputting 3 products with different dimensions.
  2. Robot picking the product from one conveyor and placing on another.
  3. Robot has a simple recorded routine for picking and placing (T1_PICK, T1_PLACE)

Goal
I want to understand how I could control the pick offset based on the incoming product.

Since the robot routine was recorded with product 1500 x 1000, the Pick frame is saved exactly at x=750, y=500 mm in the routine.

As far as I can tell, each time a product arrives at From Conveyor #2, it updates the Base, which is called From Conveyor Process #2 to the corner of the product.

This works for this particular product, however, if a smaller product needs to be picked, Pick(750,500,0) won’t be at the center of it. For example:

  1. Product 1 arrives (1500 x 1000), and Pick is not in the center any more.
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  2. Product 2 arrives (1000 x 500).
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So what should happen is that in this case the Base would be offset by (-250, -250, 0). Then Pick would again be in the middle of the product.

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And since each next product can have different sizes, the offset somehow needs to be tied to either the product dimensions or 2 properties in each product (offsetX, offsetY).

Question

  • How would it be possible to apply this offset based on either the arrived product’s dimensions or parameters?
  • Something is moving the Base frame as the product arrives at the process node. What is it and can it be modified to apply these offsets?

I already looked into adding a pick frame in each product component, but that only seems to work if robot motion is ‘Automatic’ and not with custom routines.

Thanks!

2

What is the way to realise more complex robot logic like this in Visual Components? Is there a way to open up the generic robot controller and modify the scripts in there (for example in this case to apply some offsets to the wobjs before each movement)?

I know there’s a way to connect VC to an ABB virtual controller and I think adding these sorts of offsets would be quite easy in RAPID. But what’s the way of doing this in VC?

3

Found a working solution through my own testing, because I found that the robot controller logic can be pretty easily modified.

  1. Add a vector product property for each product and define x,y,z offsets.
  2. In the robot transport controller, change the execute_custom_routine function to read the product offsets and translate the target matrices accordingly.

This way different offsets can easily be applied per product,and per _PICK and _PLACE routines.

Still wondering why there isn’t an easier way to do this in VC - this seems like a workaround.