One of the top priorities nowadays if you are sourcing a new robot (or a new automation system, or a new production line) seems to be the wish that such a system needs to be easy to use and for sure easy to program. We got so used to swiping and pinching our smartphones that we just expect kind of the same behaviour from our industrial equipment, right?
Well, yes and no. Not only is there the wish that your CAPEX equipment should become easier to handle. There is also a logical requirement coming from the current development on the shop floor to go into this direction. It has not so much to do with the idea that machine tools or robots should have the same usability as smart phones. Smart phones are universal interfaces which can be adapted to the users’ requirements mainly by installing appropriate apps. CAPEX equipment on the other side is highly specialized. The user interface usually reflects this specialization.
Do you need easy-to-use robots for a highly efficient production line?
You can expect that if you are spending a 7-or-more-figure investment for your production line that you need trained staff in order to secure sustainable operation, preventive maintenance and thus lowest TCO for it. In highly efficient production lines, you most likely will have a network of PLCs being in charge and sometimes they are even being used to program robot systems directly with the help of special libraries.
Programming standards vs. easy to use
Also – if you are operating in several plants – it may be a good idea to set programming standards and to work with parametric programming. This will make the lives of your programmers / line managers a lot easier. In addition, it makes totally sense to cooperate with only few suppliers if you don’t want to spend a fortune on maintenance, but I won’t dive too much into that topic and concentrate on it in a separate post.
It needs to be stressed that in today’s fast paced world you normally simply don’t have the time to program and teach a robot cell the moment it arrives – when we are talking about highest efficiency. Typically, you want to cut down on installation time by making use of virtual commissioning. Special simulation programs are not only being used to make reach and collision studies anymore, but you can also create a digital twin which is used to start the commissioning process long before your equipment arrives.
Why and when is easy to program important for you?
This always depends on your specific situation, it depends on you process, on your workforce, on your experience and of course on your goals. From process side it depends a lot on the level of integration. When you talk about a robot you mean more than just the robot.
The fun begins the moment you integrate other equipment like grippers, welding equipment, laser sources, safety procedures or communication protocols from machine tools. You may have a large variety of parts and eventually a camera system to identify them, a feeder to provide them to your cell and so on.
Low Mix High Volume or High Mix Low Volume?
If you are running a high volume production, every fraction of a second counts. In that case it is worth to have an optimised process running, streamlined towards maximum efficiency. For such applications, having an easy to program robot is eventually not the ideal weapon in your pocket.
The big advantage of an easy-to-program system becomes evident, if you are running high mix and low volumes (you don’t know which part you are running tomorrow). In that case you typically have high effort commissioning all your processes in your daily life. For low volume it may not even be feasible to simulate anything. You may only have a robot loading hundred parts into a machine tool before you must change the process all over again. Or you may want to use the robot in a complete other set-up during night shift, in order to increase operating hours making use of unmanned shifts. For such a scenario it is ideal to have a system which is easy to program, as you will end up doing it on the shop floor a lot.
Blocks instead of code
A common approach to easy-to-use HMIs is to make use of blocks rather than asking the operator to really code. You can compare this approach to the famous programming environment “Scratch” from MIT which is being used in education. It is great to make first steps in coding if you have had no previous experience with programming. Experts – in that case from MIT – developed typical blocks as, for instance, loops, calls, movement operations and so on which can be deployed simply by dragging them into your objects.
The HMI of an easy-to-use robot works in a similar way. You have pre-configured functions or blocks which you can deploy at your fingertip. Such a system is ideal if you don’t have any operators with robot experience in house and if you weren’t lucky enough to catch one of the last programmers on the market.
The video shows an example of an HMI following an easy-to-program standard from KUKA, called iiQKA.
Just start doing it
Especially SMCs benefit a lot from this trend of easy-to-use automation systems. They may have seen the complexity as main obstacle to start with robot automation before and an easy-to-use robot system allows them to virtually simply start with automation and gain some first experience very fast, without the need of even having an in-house-robot programmer from the beginning.
The current pandemic situation is putting a lot of additional stress on production. Not only are skilled workers hardly available on the market, also the pressure to automate is increasing. Robots are becoming mandatory on shop floors of all sizes in order to staying competitive and to securing your production.