Messages

Here I attach the photo of the robot and tool attached, because I could not add them in previous post. Also there are screenshots from Rhinoseros showing what I meant about the tangentials' direction.

Regards,
Egor Saltykov

[custom tool]

Hello Johannes!

I am preparing for my project at university and getting familiar with KUKA|prc and application of it using KUKA KR16. I have studied all the tutorials you'd provided (thanks a lot, they are pretty clear) and I have already calibrated the robot following your instructions (http://forum.robotsinarchitecture.org/index.php/topic,115.0.html). Everything works quite good, the KRL codes that I got from your tutorials are going perfectly.
So, I decided to go further using custom tool. I want the robot to draw using a sharpie. Therefore I created a mesh of my tool, imported it, defined the position of the tool. I want it to be aligned to X tool tip axis, i.e. orthogonal to A6 flange. I created the control program, using your Custom_tool tutorial as a basis. I added the table surface in order to check for collisions.

well, here are the problems I am stuck with:
1) When I draw any curve, everything goes well. But in case of a closed geometry (I chose a snail as a geometry) when I run simulation of movement, everything goes well, too. But when I try to run it with KUKA, it comes to a border condition and blocks the movement. Look the attached pictures to understand what I mean. I even tried to redefine the starting point of the movement. Depending on situation, the robot blocks different joints (usually A4 or A6), but anyways I cannot finish the drawing. For example, last time it reached -349° at A6 and tried to go further but it blocked itself, due to the movement limits. So, the question is how to solve this problem.. I think this all is because I really have no idea about the orientation point. I tried to define it as a mean point of a geometry so that the tangentials were pointed at a center of the geometry; also I tried to move the point far away so that the tangentials were almost parallel.. nothing helps. I imagine there should be some way to tell robot to compensate the positioning using the other joints, but I cannot figure it out. Maybe the problem is because I use a linear movement, but I don't think so.
2) What about collisions? Even if I connect an object to KUKA|prc and I define "check for collisions" in a corresponded setting, it gives me almost nothing. Yes, it checks and puts a red colour at the joint which goes beyond the restricted area. But why it cannot affect a compensation with the movement of other joints? As you said, there are several ways to reach the point and I think that theoretically there is a way to avoid the overpassing the limits.
3) I find really uncomfortable to export KRL code by using KUKA|prc-> Parameters-> ApplySettings button. Would not it appear more useful to have a kind of ExportCode button apart of all this? And not to update the existing code every time I want to change something. It would be cool of you to create it in future oncoming updates.

I attached the 3dm and gh files of the project for you to check my program.

Thank you very much for your patience, time and clearance of explanation. All your answers are really helpful.
I am looking forward to hearing from you soon, because I am really excited about the robot.

Regards,
Egor Saltykov
Politecnico di Milano