JP3260788B2 - Robot control device and method - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION The present invention is a robot controller and for controlling the robot and interprets and executes the robot program
The present invention relates to a method for facilitating debugging of a robot program.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in a program debugging process for controlling the operation of a robot, when debugging while executing the program, an operator interrupts the execution of the program at a specific program statement position,
Check the execution result up to that point, and then move to the position on the program next to the stop position (hereafter program point
It is common to restart the program from g) .

[0003]

The present invention is trying to solve] However, in the actual debugging, if the found the location to be corrected, temporarily interrupt the program, on that fixes the place, interrupted
It is desirable to be able to resume from the point following the program point. FIG. 1 is an example of a robot control source program. This example illustrates the usefulness of interrupting the execution of a program, modifying the program, and resuming the program from the point of interruption. Point P in FIG.
(1) to P (200) show 200 teaching point positions in executing the program of FIG. FIG.
The contents of the program, while incrementing the value of the argument A (line 20 in FIG. 1), the teaching point position of the robot P
(A) (line 30 in FIG. 21) is defined as 100
This is a program that is repeated up to the number of times (line 100 in FIG. 1).

[0004] Here, when the operator repeats the operation up to 99 times (indicating the content 99 of the variable A at this time), he notices the necessity of correction 200 times to make a correction. Suppose. In such a case, the execution of the program is temporarily stopped between line 20 and line 30, and the operator enters the program edit mode.
Then, the 100th line is corrected as IF A <200 THEN * ABC. At this point, the robot finger (not shown) should have advanced to the teaching point P (99).
If the program can be resumed from the interrupted program point, by the time P (200) is reached,
Pass through another 100 teaching points (in other words, 1 more
(Repeating the loop only 00 times).

However, a translation program (translation language) of a conventional robot control device is designed to initialize the values of all variables when an instruction in a source program is changed and variables are added or reduced. Has become. For this initialization, information up to the interruption program points are lost, because its is impossible resume from suspend program port <br/> Into. This is because it is essential to initialize a variable when a command is changed and a variable is added or reduced, in a type of robot language in which a variable definition area is not specially provided.

On the other hand, in a robot language of a type in which a variable definition area is provided separately from a procedure area, it is impossible to add or delete a variable in a procedure area, and a variable value is initialized by changing a program. Not to be.
However, in this case, the variable must be defined on another screen or another operation, which poses a problem of poor program creation efficiency. Therefore, an object of the present invention is to propose a robot control device capable of efficiently debugging a robot program.

[0007]

A robot control apparatus according to the present invention for achieving the above object has a function of translating a robot program, and controls the robot in accordance with the translated program. Means for temporarily suspending execution of a robot program during execution of the program, and allowing an operator to edit the suspended robot program, and a suspended robot
Before resuming the program, at least some of the variables in the robot program, the variable areas of which are sequentially reserved when the program is translated,
Saving means for saving the variable name and the variable value at the time of interruption by the changing means in the memory; and executing the changed program saved in the memory by the saving means in the process of executing the changed program.
Use the same variable name as the variable in the program after
Searching and interrupting using the variable value of the searched variable name
Restart means for restarting the obtained robot program . According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a robot control method that has a function of translating a robot program and controls a robot in accordance with the translated program. the interruption of the execution temporarily operating
To edit the interrupted robot program.
And the changing step that, before the resumption of interrupted robot program
For at least some of the variables in the robot program, the variable areas of which are sequentially reserved when the program is translated, the variable names and the variable values at the time of interruption by the change means are stored in a memory. In the evacuation step of evacuation during the execution and the execution of the program after the change, the evacuation
Find the same variable names and variables in the program after the change from the variable name is saved in the memory in step, it is searched
Using the variable value of the variable name
; And a resume resume Engineering degree gram.

[0008]

According to the robot control device having the above configuration, the robot
Suspends the execution of the
Edit robot programs. Edit
The case where the robot program is changed, with respect to variables sequentially variable area when a program translation is ensured, and the variable name, and the variable values during program interruption Ru are saved in memory. Then , in the execution process of the program after the change, a variable having the same variable name as the variable in the program before the change is searched, and the searched variable
For the number , a variable value saved in the memory is used .
For this reason, resume the robot program while inheriting a program of post-edit the resulting execution by editing the previous program
Let it can, increase the efficiency of the debugging of the program.

[0009]

Preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a configuration of an embodiment of the robot control device 100 according to the present invention. Reference numeral 1 denotes a CPU that controls the operation of the robot control device 100 according to a program stored in the ROM 3. 2 is CPU1
1 shows a ROM that stores a control program and a translation program for operating the program. Reference numeral 3 denotes a work area in the ROM 3 for executing various programs, and a RAM for storing a robot program described in a robot language for operating the robot. Reference numeral 4 denotes a keyboard for creating and translating a robot program and instructing the operation of the robot. Reference numeral 5 denotes a device for storing the robot program and operation data. Reference numeral 6 denotes a display unit that forms a display screen when the robot is controlled, and 7 denotes a printer that outputs a robot program, data, and the like.

The robot controller 100 sends an interpreted command to an external controller 12 via an interface 11, and based on the command, the controller 12
Controls the robot 13. The programming language used in this embodiment is not a type in which variables are declared in another area, but a new variable area is provided in the RAM 3 every time a new variable appears in a program. In FIG. 3, reference numeral 8 denotes a variable evacuation area for storing variables used in the robot word at the time of translation for each value, and 9 denotes a variable used in the robot program after correction from the variable evacuation area of 8. Means 10 for registering variables in the variable area of the robot program according to the search result of 9.

FIG. 4 shows the operation of a characteristic function (referred to as a “correction restart function”) of the control device 100 of the present embodiment. That is, if the robot 100 is stopped during execution of the robot program, the controller 100 saves all the variable values in the save area 8 and uses the variable in the program after the correction and the variable name of the program before the correction. The value of the variable with the same name is used when restarting the modified program. FIG. 3 shows whether a variable having the same name as the variable in the program after the modification is in the variable of the program before the modification.
Is performed by the search unit 9. Then, when resuming, the registration unit 1
0 indicates a variable area corresponding to the searched variable name in the RAM 3
The value of the retrieved variable is read out from the save area and set in each variable area secured in the RAM 3. In this embodiment, the evacuation is performed only when a predetermined key (evacuation key) on the keyboard 4 is pressed.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart of a control program for performing the above-described correction restart function. Usually, CPU1
Repeats the cycle of fetching and executing each statement of the robot program in steps S2 to S4 in order for the operator to issue a stop instruction. This stop instruction is normally performed via the keyboard 4. If there is a stop instruction, the stop program point is stored in step S8. In step S10, it is determined whether the robot program has been modified. If not corrected, steps S24 to S10 are performed until the resume key is pressed.
Wait at. If the Resume key is pressed, resume up the next sentence of the Stop program point that had been saved in step S8
The program returns to step S2 as a program point.

If the robot program is modified in step S10, the modified robot program is translated in step S12. In step S14, it is checked whether the operator has instructed to save the program variable value. When the operator instructs the evacuation, the evacuation is made in the evacuation area 8 by associating the variable name with the variable value in step S16. Then, in step S18, the names of the variables in the program after the correction are compared with the names of the variables in the program before the correction, and those having the same name are searched. In step S20, the program is registered as the next program to be executed in the modified program RAM 3, and an area for a variable having the same name is secured in the variable area in advance, and the variable is searched for as the value of each variable. Set the value.

In step S22, the operator is prompted to designate a program restart program point.
If the restart program point is not specified, step S8
The statement following the program point saved in the step is determined as a program statement to be executed next. In steps S2 to S6, the corrected program is newly executed. Although the modified program is newly executed, it differs from the new execution of the program in the conventional apparatus in the following points. That is, step S2, step S
Even if there is a variable first appearing in the operand of the instruction fetched in step 4, if the variable is a variable already registered in the RAM 3, the value of the registered variable is used. You do it.

The operation of the apparatus 100 of the embodiment will be specifically described with reference to the case where the program shown in FIG. 1 is used. When the operator repeats the operation of the program loop of FIG. 1 up to 99 times, the program is temporarily stopped, and
It is assumed that the 0th line is corrected as IF A <200 THEN * ABC. Then, in the control procedure of FIG. 5, before the corrected program is restarted, the variable area A is already secured in the RAM 3 and the value “99” is set to A in step S20. I have. For this reason, the corrected program can be operated continuously from the present time even after retranslation without repeating from A = 0.

The present invention may be applied to a system constituted by a plurality of devices or to an apparatus constituted by a single device. Needless to say, the present invention can be applied to a case where the present invention is achieved by supplying a program to a system or an apparatus. In the above embodiment, the robot language is of a type in which the variable area is not set in advance, but the present invention is not limited to this.
The present invention is also applicable to a control device using a robot language of a type in which a variable area is set in advance. In this case, it is not necessary to set the variable area in advance in step S20, but only to set the searched variable value.

[0017]

The robot controller of the present invention described above.
According to the above, variable areas are confirmed sequentially during program translation.
For variables to be stored, the variable name and the
And variable values during disconnection is saved in memory, the execution process of the changed program, the variables having the same variable names and variables in the program before the change, since using the saved values in memory Thus, the execution result of the program before the modification can be inherited by the program after the modification, thereby increasing the efficiency of debugging.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing an example of a robot program.

FIG. 2 is a view showing teaching points used in the program of FIG. 1;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of a control device according to the present embodiment.

FIG. 4 is an exemplary view for explaining the principle of a modification restart function characteristic of the embodiment;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart showing a control procedure for realizing a correction restart function.

Continued on the front page (58) Fields surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) G05B 19/18-19/46 B25J 3/00-3/04 B25J 9/10-9/22 B25J 13/00-13 / 08 B25J 19/02-19/06 G06F 9 / 06,11 / 28

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] A translation function of a robot program,
A robot controller for controlling a robot according to the translation program, in the middle execution of the robot program, to suspend execution of the robot program, and changing means for causing the editing of the interrupted robot program the operator is interrupted Before resuming the robot program, at least some of the variables in the robot program, the variable areas of which are sequentially reserved at the time of translation of the program, have the variable names and the and saving means for saving the variable values in memory, the execution process of the changed program, said saving means
Search for the same variable name as the variable in the program after the change from the variable name saved in the memory.
Re-execute the interrupted robot program using the variable values
A robot control device comprising: a restart unit that opens . 2. The system according to claim 1, wherein said resuming means further comprises:
Prompt for the restart point of the robot program and restart
If the point is not specified, it will be interrupted by the change means.
Before the program statement to be executed after the specified point
The robot control device according to claim 1, wherein the robot program is restarted . 3. It has a translation function of a robot program,
A robot control method for controlling a robot according to the translation program, in the middle execution of the robot program, to suspend execution of the robot program, and changing step of causing the editing of the interrupted robot program the operator is interrupted Before resuming the robot program, at least some of the variables in the robot program, the variable areas of which are sequentially reserved at the time of translation of the program, have the variable names and the In the evacuation process of saving the variable values in the memory and in the execution process of the program after the change, the evacuation process is performed in the evacuation process.
Search for the same variable name as the variable in the program after the change from the variable name saved in the memory, and the searched variable name
The interrupted robot program using the variable values of
A restarting step of restarting the robot. 4. The restarting step further includes the step of:
Prompt for the restart point of the robot program and restart
If the point is not specified, it will be interrupted in the change process.
Before the program statement to be executed after the specified point
Resuming the robot program
Item 4. The robot control method according to item 3.