Remote programming of the Mitsubishi
Contents
1. Solti aall oO of Achievements in Materials December and Manufacturing Engineering 2008 Remote programming of the Mitsubishi Movemaster robot by using the web based interface 1 Introduction K Foit Institute of Engineering Processes Automation and Integrated Manufacturing Systems ul Konarskiego 18a 44 100 Gliwice Poland Corresponding author E mail address krzysztof foit polsl pl Received 11 09 2008 published in revised form 01 12 2008 Manufacturing and processing ABSTRACT Purpose The aim of this paper is to present a prototype of web based programming interface for the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot Design methodology approach The web techniques have been selected due to modularity of this solution and possibility of use the existing code fragments for elaborating new applications The previous papers 11 14 have presented the off line remote programming system for the RV M1 robot The general idea of this system is a base for developing a web based programming interface Findings The prototype of the system has been developed Research limitations implications The presented system is in the early development stage and there is a lack of some functions In the future a visualisation module will be elaborated and the trajectory translator intended to co operate with CAD software will be included Practical implications The previous version of the system has been intended for educational purposes I2. and the other for control the Internet camera The off line programming and simulation tasks are done by the ROBO application A simple program can be also generated by using a CAD program for example in AutoCAD A path is coded in 3 D by a line entity Each point represents a position of the robot s wrist and the status of the gripper open or closed is described by a point entity The trajectory is then saved in the DXF The ROBO application uses a dictionary file to translate DXF commands into proper Movemaster Commands directives A control panel and a simulation window are two main areas of the ROBO application s window Figure 2 The simulation routine uses the OpenGL libraries and models created in a 3D modelling program to achieve the imitation of a real robot s environment There is also possible to add some type of equipment to the virtual environment besides an object of manipulation tables and shelves can be added to the robot s scene All the 3D data can be edited in the modeller so the environment and objects could be changed or updated There is also the possibility of handling more than one virtual robot but this feature requires at least two copies of the ROBO program connected to the same server Tadeo Lf Fig 2 The main window of the ROBO application with two robots in simulation area The papers 10 14 describe all advantages of the system details It should be mentioned that the ROBO system has been d
3. sending the position data to the manipulator the Nest command is automatically called This is a security issue to assure that before any move is done the manipulator always starts from the same position 3 2 The communication As it was mentioned earlier the model based on the web server and CGI has been selected to prepare the interface The assumption of this method is that every form is connected with some action on the server side The core application is the web server which processes requests from a client browser and intermediates between the client side and applications Some of the code is also executed on the client side mainly the scripts processed by browser It provides a better functionality and maintenance of the forms There are several applications on the server side which are executed by the CGI action requests In this case the modularity means the better functionality because there is no need to rebuild one huge application the small application code is better to understand and for further processing and enhancement It is also the best method to avoid errors during the exploitation of the system The applications which are executed on the server can be generally divided into three groups e the applications providing the communication between the server computer and the robot s controller e the applications for processing the operation results obtained from the programs belonging to the group mentioned
4. above and for generating the appreciate reports in the HTML code Maintenance e the applications providing the maintenance tasks which are not directly connected with the communication issues but can be used by any application belonging to any group mentioned above It is obvious that modularity means also the lower workload of the overall server system The applications are loaded on demand This may cause some delays but they are not important from the user s point of view because this is not a real time system The communication process is schematically shown in Figure 9 The web server application receives a request from a browser and redirects it by CGI interface to a proper application The application processes the information and uses the communication program to send it to the robot s controller The communication application requests the status of the robot or receives the data which are redirected to the other program in order to generate HTML output The HTML file is then processed by web server application and sent by network to the browser The maintenance applications are independent programs which do not participate directly in the communication process The role of these applications is to do some marginal tasks like setting the serial communication parameters checking the syntax doing characters conversion etc These applications are used by the other belonging to the first two layers of the sy
5. anowicz Modeling of manufacturing systems and robot motions Journal of Materials Processing Technology 164 165 2005 1369 1378 6 J Alvares J C Espindola Ferreira WebTurning Teleoperation of a CNC turning center through the Internet Journal of Materials Processing Technology 179 2006 251 259 7 T S Mujber T Szecsi M S J Hashmi Virtual reality applications in manufacturing process simulation Journal of Materials Processing Technology 155 156 2004 1834 1838 8 Q Peng F R Hall P M Lister Application and evaluation of VR based CAPP system Journal of Materials Processing Technology 107 2000 153 159 9 W B Lee C F Cheung J G Li Applications of virtual manufacturing in materials processing Journal of Materials Processing Technology 113 2001 416 423 10 K Foit J Swider The project of a platform independent off line programming system for industrial robots Proceedings of the 7 International Scientific Conference Computer Integrated Manufacturing Intelligent Manufacturing Systems CIM 2005 Gliwice Wista 2005 62 65 11 K Foit J Swider D Mastrowski The project of an off line remote programming system for Mitsubishi Movemaster industrial robot Proceedings of the 13 International Scientific and Technical Conference Machine Building and Technosphere of the XXT Sevastopol 2006 vol 4 252 255 12 D Mastrowski The system for remote programming Supervision and simulation
6. d after sending it to the robot s controller 15 Due to properties of the robot s programming language allow a user to quickly create its own communication software for co operation with the robot The main disadvantages of the software described in 11 14 is that it is intended for the Windows platform only and cannot be easily ported to the other operating system platform In the publications 10 14 a general concept of a platform independent application has been presented This paper presents more details of this idea and describes the prototype of the software 2 The description of the existing system and the concept of the new one As it was described in the section 1 the existing system consists of three applications the server module the programming and simulation module and the Internet camera and robot control module The Figure 1 shows an example of a hardware configuration used with the software package Internet camera Client station Server computer RV M1 robot Fig 1 The example of a hardware configuration used with ROBO software package Research paper It is a typical configuration with a server on the one side and a client on the other one The ROBO application is a client program and it is installed on the user machine The SERWER and KAMROB applications should be installed on the server computer There can be one server for both applications or two machines one for handling the robot
7. ection is connected with adding and deleting positions of the manipulator and defining the status of the gripper The Control Panel menu consists of four commands e Nest resets the manipulator to the origin position zero e Run executes a program stored in memory e Clear program clears the program area of the controller s memory e Clear positions clears the positions area of the controller s memory All the executed operations should be confirmed by the user This is done by using JavaScript code which displays a confirmation window An example of such a window is shown in Figure 6 MENU Control Panel Program Positions Download from robo Log window Clear window Programming window Send to robot Windows Internet Explorer x P Do you want to delete robot s program Fig 6 An example of a confirmation window shown before operation The Program and Positions menus are intended for robot s programming and adding or deleting positions The procedure of programming the robot with use of the web interface is very similar to a classic way which is conducted by using any dedicated application In the Figure 7 the complete programming interface is shown It consists of program editing area five buttons and log area The Programming window format is intended for program editing A user can manually enter a program text or paste it from an external editor After editing the code ca
8. ed by time consuming or memory consuming tasks The use of simple and lightweight web server software has minimized the workload of the system The server has run quite smoothly on Windows 98 operating system without any other unnecessary applications using Pentium I 200MHz based mainboard and 1GB hard disk The client side hardware requirements are connected with used operating system and a web browser application Performance Because the system is not intended to be real time then the performance is not a priority The overall performance is quite well short delays are the result of sending commands over the network They are the most noticeable during the step by step execution of a program or during use of the position checking function in Positions Panel The delays are also the result of using the serial communication between the server and the robot Compatibility The system has been tested on the most popular web browsers running on the different operating system platform no problem has been noticed Some changes in the appearance of the page have been caused by the browsers rendering engines Operation of the system A web interface is friendlier than any other This is also because a web browser is the most used application by computer users Of course the operation of the web based programming system for the RV M1 robot requires at least basic knowledge of Movemaster Command language and about operating the robot Fu
9. erver to interface with external application software It means that a web server process a request from a web browser transfer the parameter to an external application and run it The application returns output information to the server and the server transmits it to the client s browser In this manner any application or script can be called CONTROL PANEL Executes the NEST command This moves the manipulator to the origin Executes the program stored in the robot s controller memory PROGRAM ears the program stored in the robot s controller memory CLEAR POSITIONS eats the positions stored in the robot s controller memory Fig 5 The Control Panel page from the web based programming interface Remote programming of the Mitsubishi Movemaster robot by using the web based interface 3 1 The interface In this section the web based interface will be discussed In order to use the interface a user must log in into service After logging in the main page is displayed in a web browser The working area consists of two parts a menu frame on the left side and an operation frame on the right Figure 5 The menu contains three sections e Control Panel it is used to provide basic administration tasks for the control unit of the robot e Program this section is related to all the actions connected with robot s programming 1 e program upload and download step by step execution I O monitor e Positions the s
10. eveloped in collaboration with a student so it has been primarily intended for educational purposed The main drawbacks of the system are e the need of installation on both server and client side e the dependence on the Windows operating system In order to eliminate mentioned disadvantages an idea of a platform independent system has been developed There has been K Foit one solution based on a web server Figure 3 and the other based on the Java environment Figure 4 both described with all the particulars in the papers 10 14 In the further part of this paper a selected method will be described Web browser with plug ins Web server CGI robot control Fig 3 The idea of the web based programming system ava a Java Runtime Environment Web server with Java archives Fig 4 The idea of the Java based programming system 2 1 The idea of the new system It has been decided that for the further development the method based on a web server will be used There are some benefits of this method in comparison with the Java based system e the source code of previously developed system need not be translated e in the case that the server will be run on the Windows operating system the new applications could be created on the base of the existing source code MENU Control Panel NEST position Program RUN Positions CLEAR Manufacturing and processing e the i
11. llers are often prepared Copyright by International OCSCO World Press All rights reserved 2008 e ROBO the programming and simulation module for RV M1 robot e KAMROB the Internet camera and robot control module The complete system has been designed to operate with the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot It uses a typical personal computer equipped with serial port and serial connection between the robot s control unit and the computer The system is intended and it should be executed on 32 bit Microsoft Windows platform It also requires the TCP IP network connection The package has been intended to run on the Microsoft Windows platform with the use of a network connection The Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M lis the robot with a five axis manipulator and 1 2 kg lifting capacity The control device of the robot is equipped with the card containing 16 binary inputs and outputs It has also the possibility of connecting it to a personal computer using Centronics or RS232 port Despite the small size of the robot it is a typical industrial machine The robot can be programmed using a personal computer or by the teaching box in case of using the teaching box only positions can be written into memory In case of using a computer program is prepared in Movemaster Commands language It has very simple syntax and allows writing the code in any text editor The robot can work in batch mode when every command is immediately execute
12. n be copied and inserted to a text editor The program can be also uploaded from or downloaded to a file This is done by using Download from robot and Send to robot buttons A copy of the uploaded or downloaded program is made automatically after selecting one of the mentioned buttons The upload from a file procedure is conducted if the programming window is empty Then the small window is displayed where a user can select a file to upload PROGRAMMING PANEL El Fig 7 The Programming Panel K Foit The Clear robot s progr button has the same functionality like the Clear program function in the Control Panel page The Step by step exec button is intended for a program testing It sends a program to the controller without line numbers line by line which causes the immediate execution of a sent command The Log window displays current robot status Besides of error messages it displays also the result of last executed command The Clear window button located under the window clears all the messages The messages and programming window will be cleared after leaving the Programming Panel and returning to it later It is required to execute the Download or Send functions in case the programming window to be filled every time the Programming Panel is loaded This issue will be overworked in the further versions of the interface The last menu item is the Positions Panel Fig 8 This section is responsible for definition and ma
13. nctionality The experimental version of the system has limited functionality because being at testing stage 4 2 The future plans In the future it is planned to elaborate more functional interface for the system The other proposals are e the Linux FreeBSD implementation in order to use the free fully configurable operating system e the implementation of simulation window with the virtual workspace the introduction of some elements of visual programming the implementation of the DXF converter 10 14 for trajectory generation e the elaboration of an ActiveX control or DDE server for use with different Windows applications Manufacturing and processing There is also an idea of using a similar system for PLC controllers Such a system should be more advanced to implement the standard PLC s programming languages References 1 T Otrebski Remote monitoring and control using GPRS service Control Engineering Poland 8 36 2006 62 64 in Polish 2 A Presher The network control of machines in the spotlight Design News 9 16 2006 48 51 in Polish 3 S F Chan R Kwan Post processing methodologies for off line robot programming within computer integrated manufacture Journal of Materials Processing Technology 139 2003 8 14 4 G Yasuda Distributed autonomous control of modular robot systems using parallel programming Journal of Materials Processing Technology 141 2003 357 364 5 G Kost R Zd
14. nipulation of the positions data set The panel contains one editing window where a user can enter a PD or PC commands sequence There are three buttons under the window which are responsible for communication with the robot s control unit The buttons marked as Download from robot Send to robot and Clear robot s pos have similar functions as in case of Programming Panel A file saving and uploading is done in the same way as in the Programming Panel with the only a little difference that the positions are stored and uploaded without line numbers so the directives are executed on the fly The nesting procedure is executed automatically before sending any data Control Panel Positions window Program Positions Download from robot Coordinates panel Pos nr X Y Positions check buttons lt DEC Send to robot Manufacturing and processing The coordinates can be also entered using the Coordinates panel section There are six fields for entering numbers The Pos nr field is for writing the position number the X Y and Z are responsible for coordinates Finally the Pitch and Roll describe the position of the wrist After entering the numbers one can use the Define position button for the automatic generation of the PD command which is finally added to the editor window In order to use the HERE and P Clear buttons require defining a position number only The first button defines a position on the base on the cu
15. nterface of the application is provided by the web resources so there is no need to develop a graphical user interface for any new application e the system can achieve a high level of modularity because applications can be developed as independent modules used on demand e the user interface can be easily modified and developed from scratch to the advanced one e there is a possibility of using secure connections certificates and distributed services e there can be alternative user interfaces intended to use on a different operating system and browser platforms like ActiveX Flash or Java modules The first experimental version of the web based programming system has not been equipped with 3 D simulation module This feature will be enabled in further versions It is planned to use the Adobe Flash the Shockwave the VRML X3D plug in to build simulation interface The existing version also has not video transmission module These features have not been important to achieve the basic functionality so they have been omitted during the development process On the other hand they require special modules and software to elaborate them 3 The preliminary version of web based programming interface The preliminary version of web based programming interface for the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot has been based on a web server running on Windows operating system and CGI Common Gateway Interface programs The CGI allows a web s
16. of robots cooperating with Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 Robot MSc thesis Gliwice 2006 in Polish 13 J wider K Foit G Wszo ek D Mastrowski The off line programming and simulation software for the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering 20 2007 499 502 14 J wider K Foit G Wszo ek D Mastrowski The system for simulation and offline remote programming of the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering 25 1 2007 7 14 15 Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 User s Manual READING DIRECT wwwjournalamme org GEE
17. rrent location of the manipulator The definition is automatically added to the editor window This is useful in case of moving the manipulator using incremental functions when the concrete position should be defined The P Clear button generates the PC commands and erases the definition specified by the position number from the controller s memory As opposed to the HERE and Define position buttons the PC command is executed immediately without inserting it to the editor window The last part of the Positions Panel is a section that contains the position check buttons There are three buttons e INC moves the manipulator to the next position on the position list e lt DEC moves the manipulator to the previous position on the position list e Go to position moves the manipulator to the position number entered into the text field if the position does not exist on the list then an error message is displayed POSITIONS PANEL You can write PD PC directives in the text box or use the coordinates panel Z Pitch Roll Define position INC gt Go to position 4 Fig 8 The Positions Panel Remote programming of the Mitsubishi Movemaster robot by using the web based interface The presented web based programming interface consists only the most frequently used functions It should assure only the basic functionality which is necessary to test an application Before executing the Run command or
18. stem and by the web server module Besides mentioned software installed on the server there is some more like script interpreters database server or preloaded modules for browsers plugins ActiveX Java applications At this stage of development there is no need to install all of them Some actions are realised as scripts so they need an interpreter but the main modules are compiled The experimental server system is running on the Windows platform This operation system has been selected because existing source code has been written for the Delphi compiler and thus some element of it can be used in the new web based system fe TE Tes Fi PE te Deena ers ies n Co Mu wt Web browser Fig 9 The schema of the communication process K Foit 4 Conclusions The main aim of this work was to elaborate a web based system for programming the Mitsubishi Movemaster RV M1 robot This system has been assumed as a platform independent so it should be compatible with most available web browsers and should not use system dependent modules on the client side The other assumption has been made that the first version should assure only the basic functionality needed for system testing The emphasis has been put on the development of the server side software 4 1 The overall rating of the project Hardware requirements Because of using the modular structure of the software installed on the server the system is not overload
19. t is planned that new version will be more flexible and it will have the possibility of being adapted for other devices like small PLC s or other robots Originality value Remote supervision of machines during a manufacturing process is an actual issue Most of automation systems manufacturers produce supervising software for their PLC s and robots The Movemaster RV M1 robot is an old model and is lack of the high tech software On the other hand the programming and development of applications for this robot are very easy The aim of the presented project is to develop a flexible remote programming environment Keywords Automation engineering processes Robotics Mechatronics Technological devices and equipment Numerical techniques and tested on computers using a virtual environment then are uploaded to a real device using network connections 1 9 An example of the off line programming and simulation Industrial networks are very significant elements of a package has been presented in the papers 11 14 The software contemporary factory They connect different levels of a package has been written in a high level object oriented company giving the possibility of analysing and change of programming language and it consists of three applications production parameters from an office room The network also e SERWER the server module connects machines and control systems in order to exchange the data between them Programs for contro
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