Teach mode collision avoidance system and method for industrial robotic manipulators

A robot system comprising:

• a robot including a manipulator arm designed to carry a tool or part along an actual path in an environment containing objects, the objects, the robot, and the tool or part constituting collision geometry;
• a teach pendant including an operator interface configured to receive operator input entered into the teach pendant, whereby an operator is able to directly control motion of the robot along the actual path;
• and
• a robot controller, said controller including a virtual representation of the robot and the environment and being configured to:
• record a history of the motion of the robot along the actual path,
• develop a predicted path of the robot in the virtual representation based on the input entered into the teach pendant and the history of the motion of the robot, and
• perform real-time collision checking by projecting the robot's future motion along the predicted path and checking between the robot at predicted robot positions on the predicted path and the collision geometry while the operator manually controls the robot using the teach pendant.