A Novel Designed Interactive Training Platform for Industrial Robot Offline Programming and Robotics Education

Abstract

The people interested in industrial robots at a beginner level, such as engineers, operators, or technicians, as well as robotics lecturers typically have difficulties during their first interactions with a robot. The first difficulty is to create a relation between the robot and the mathematical equations of its kinematics. One of the other barriers is to learn the robot workspace and the robot manipulator's reachability. After achieving these two steps, it possible to start robot programming and physical robot interaction appropriate for industrial robot applications. In this study, a novel interactive training platform is presented. This platform is designed for the offline programming of industrial robots and its goals are to support robot education, practical robot study, and industrial robot science. In this interactive robot platform, all commercial robot brands' manipulator geometry configuration and new manipulator geometry designs can be created. All functions such as programming, basic movement type (linear, joint, reorient), manipulator workspaces definition, tool centre point and axis velocity, acceleration are available. The platform presents some solid objects that can be inserted in the workspace and can make demonstrations for programming. There are also real programming logic controller and robot connections for offline programming. This platform is designed and developed based on open-source libraries, is small in size, and is able to work on all operating systems (e.g., Windows, Mac, and Linux). This software may not be a satisfactory tool for robot specialists but is very effective for beginners in robot programming, such as students and robot operators in the plant.

Robotics in Education: A Scientific Mapping of the Literature in Web of Science

“…It is important to keep in mind that robotics in education can be presented from several perspectives [52][53][54][55]: learning robotics, where students learn to design, build, and program a robot; learning with robotics, where robots are tools that serve to promote student learning; and robots for education, where the robot is the main tool for the learning process. This last option is related to telepresence in the educational sphere, where robots are used to develop distance learning [56].…”

Design Method and Example of a Simple Educational Robot

“…In order to allow students at different levels to fully engage with robotics, Matsushita et al designed a fast, inexpensive robotic application toolbox [5]. There are many platforms for robot education at present [6][7][8], including both physical robots and virtual robots (including simulation and game software), such as LEGO in Denmark, FISCHER in Germany, and Uptech Harmony Ltd robot development kit from China, etc. However, the integrity of the platform and the limitations of hardware and software often limit the user's creative ability.…”