Robot multi-arm control system
AssigneeFanuc Robotics America, Inc.
InventorsAkihiro Yanagita, Jianming Tao, Tien Chang, Ho Wong, H. McGee, Chi-Keng Tsai, Sai-Kai Cheng, Steven Nickel, Hadi Akeel
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A robot multi-arm control system includes robot controllers that communicate via a network to transmit synchronization information from a master controller to one or more slave controllers in order to coordinate manufacturing processes. The system accounts for the network communication delay when synchronizing the event timing for process and motion synchronization.
Claims20
A system for synchronization of at least two robot arms comprising:
- a first robot arm connected to a first controller having a data area in which first robot family information is stored;
- a second robot arm connected to a second controller having a data area in which second robot family information is stored;
- a network connection between said first and second controllers for transmitting signals;
- and
- a master main program stored in said first controller and a slave main program stored in said second controller, said master main program and said slave main program each containing program instructions to be executed for coordinated operations of said first and second robot arms respectively, and wherein said first robot family information and said second robot family information identifies said first and second robot arms as members of a robot family.
A method of controlling at least two robot arms according to associated control programs comprising the steps of:
- connecting at least one controller of the at least two robot arms with a means for exchanging data;
- storing the associated control program for each of the robot arms in a data area;
- storing in the data area a plurality of guide rules that direct execution of the control programs;
- selecting a set of the guide rules according to the type of the control program;
- and
- executing the control programs according to the set of guide rules to generate data through the network connection to control the at least two robot arms in synchronization.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.