DEVELOPING A ROBOTICS SIMULATOR FOR INDUSTRIAL ROBOT OPERATOR TRAINING

Every year more and more technologies are implemented worldwide. Constantly new materials are being developed, production methods are changing, and new modern equipment is being implemented. Automation and robotics technologies are of key importance for advanced economies. These branches enable significant costs reduction for industry enterprises. At the same time the problem of young professionals training for industrial robotics and automation arises. Such personnel training is very complicated. The main difficulties are: expensive equipment, large amount of knowledge, fast branch development and few existing branch-specific training techniques.

Standard teaching frameworks and even software implementation are not enough for industrial robot operator training. Hands-on practice is crucial for safety purposes and professional skills development. New hardware lab equipment is to be implemented, e.g. special simulators. Major robotics vendors offer special solutions for young professionals’ training and education, but these solutions are expensive and have limited configuration varieties for different customers’ needs. Often industrial robot samples are used for training and education purposes. Such an approach is extremely unsafe and costly. These factors force enterprises to constantly improve their training techniques.

This paper focuses on a special handler simulator development for primary robotics skills training designed for high school, college and university students and other trainees. The key advantages of this new solution are low costs, simple maintenance, safety and wide function extension options. The simulator is capable acquisition and handling various items like parts, blank parts and tools. Replacing the gripper with a special tool enables welding and panting operations simulation. Moscow State University of Technology STANKIN is carrying out the simulator development. At this point, there are finished prototypes of the handler, the control system based on the MIPS M4K core microcontroller and the basic simulation software. The prototype improvement is going on. The developed sample showed itself useful as lab equipment for applied robotics courses. Currently the new simulator outmatches most of the existing solutions. Considering costs and extension options, it has no direct analogs.

Developing new simulation facilities is a complicated task that requires understanding the modern industrial robotics principles. Future robot operators’ training equipment will mainly focus on safety, extension options and real robot samples’ activity imitation preciseness. New training simulators are to be designed taking in consideration the industrial production specifics. The developed handler simulator is designed to match these tasks and can be improved according to the customers’ needs.