An Industrial Manipulator for Shipbuilding;Off-Line Programming and Open Architecture

  • Lee, Ji-Hyoung (School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University) ;
  • Hong, Kyung-Tae (School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University) ;
  • Oh, Seung-Min (School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University) ;
  • Hong, Keum-Shik (School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University)
  • Published : 2005.06.02

Abstract

In this paper, to improve the efficiency of welding and user convenience in the shipbuilding industry, a PC-based off-line programming (OLP) technique and the development of a robot transfer unit are presented. The developed OLP system is capable of not only robot motion simulations but also automatic generations of a series of robot programs. The strength of the developed OLP system lies in its flexibility in handling the changes of the welding robot's target objects. Moreover, for a precise transfer of the robot to a desired location, an auxiliary mobile platform named a robot-origin-transfer-unit (ROTU) was developed. To enhance the cornering capability of the platform in a narrow area, the developed ROTU is equipped with 2 steering wheels and 1 driving wheel. Both the OLP and the ROTU were field-tested and their performances were proven successful.

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