Method for handling a voltage drop in the control of a robot and for restarting a robot following a voltage drop

Abstract

A method for handling the voltage drop, at least in the control unit of a robot with a PC control is provided that minimizes the time of a plant stoppage and avoids wasteful process interruptions. The PC control has a real time operating system for the time critical control and regulation of the robot movement and a standard PC operating system for communication with an operator. In the case of a voltage drop a battery/accumulator operation takes place with running robot movement and optionally application operations broken off or ended in a clearly defined manner. Then, working processes of the control are terminated. The contents of the working memory at the termination time concerning the real time operating system and robot control programs are stored, particularly as an image, in at least one mass memory. For restarting the robot after such a stoppage thereof the standard PC operating system is loaded in the conventional manner into the working memory and started. The contents relating to the state of the real time operating system and the robot programs in the termination state are transferred from the mass memory or memories, where they are in particular present in image form, into the working memory and the control of the robot and optionally also miscellaneous peripherals, are resumed in the termination state.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.