Implementation of LabVIEW®-based joint-linear motion blending on a lab-manufactured 6-axis articulated robot (RS2)

For fast and accurate motion of 6-axis articulated robot, more noble motion control strategy is needed. In general, the movement strategy of industrial robots can be divided into two kinds, PTP (Point to Point) and CP (Continuous Path). In recent, industrial robots which should be co-worked with machine tools are increasingly needed for performing various jobs, as well as simple handling or welding. Therefore, in order to cope with high-speed handling of the cooperation of industrial robots with machine tools or other devices, CP should be implemented so as to reduce vibration and noise, as well as decreasing operation time. This paper will realize CP motion (especially joint-linear) blending in 3-dimensional space for a 6-axis articulated (lab-manufactured) robot (called as “RS2”) by using LabVIEW® [6] programming, based on a parametric interpolation. Another small contribution of this paper is the proposal of motion blending simulation technique based on Recurdyn® V7, in order to figure out whether the joint-linear blending motion can generate the stable motion of robot in the sense of velocity magnitude at the end-effector of robot or not. In order to evaluate the performance of joint-linear motion blending, simple PTP (i.e., linear-linear) is also physically implemented on RS2. The implementation results of joint-linear motion blending and PTP are compared in terms of vibration magnitude and travel time by using the vibration testing equipment of Medallion of Zonic®. It can be confirmed verified that the vibration peak of joint-linear motion blending has been reduced to 1/10, compared to that of PTP.