Robot tool following surface normal

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aiur
Posts: 6
Joined: 02 Sep 2014, 06:08

Robot tool following surface normal

Post by aiur »

Hi,

I'm working on a simulation with one 6 axis robot and one curved surface. The surface has one continuous line for the robot to follow. Can I somehow make the robot tool orientation always perpendicular (normal) to the surface where the point is located? For the surface normal, do I need to calculate it outside of V-REP, for example, in MasterCAM and then use some format to import into V-REP?

Thank you!

coppelia
Site Admin
Posts: 10362
Joined: 14 Dec 2012, 00:25

Re: Robot tool following surface normal

Post by coppelia »

Hello,

you can use the built-in IK functionality for driving your tools into the desired pose. With a little bit of luck, or depending on the curve and robot configuration, you'll be able to successfully drive the robot along the path. However:

the ik functionality will not be able to foresee any possible discontinuity/blocking situation: imagine a joint limit that will hinder the IK to continue in the same movement/flow. Instead, that joint limit should force the robot to leave the path, to reconfigure itself (e.g. moving from the positive side of the joint limit to the negative side of the joint limit) before continuing to follow the path. So there is no planning in that sense.

The IK functionality is only in charge of bringing the robot tool from the robot's current configuration to a specific tool pose. There is no overall planning involved. IF you need that, you'll have to figure out an appropriate algorithm.

Cheers

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