K-Roset: A beginner’s journey

Greetings Fellow Novice --

I’ve been a software developer for 20 years and have taught others how to code at various points in my career. It’s always eye-opening to discover knowledge you take for granted that a beginner will have difficulty figuring out on their own. I have no prior experience with robotics, CAD type tools or any other application similar to K-ROSET.

My intention is to document a novice’s journey of learning how to develop a simulation in K-ROSET. Hopefully, this will assist other beginners with topics that seasoned K-ROSET developers don’t think about any more and save you some time.

I’m learning on K-ROSET Version 1.8.1.16605 on Windows 10 Pro. The robot is: https://robotics.kawasaki.com/…l-medium-payloads/RS020N/. I’m not learning for a factory but rather a small shop starting with one robot and one mill.

The task I have to accomplish is similar to the provided sample project RS010N_Floor_Handling. Unfortunately, there are two projects with that same name. It’s the top one that feeds into a mill with a door and not the one moving bottles into a box. (image attached)

Some miscellaneous observations and suggestions

Unlocking the full version with the USB license.

If you plug in the license USB to unlock your K-ROSET LITE version it likely won’t work. The secret was tucked away in some printed material that came with the CD. You need to download a specific driver for it to recognize the USB. The provided URL in the material directed me to a dead site with no redirect. Pulling apart the URL and putting the pieces into a search engine eventually led me here: https://sentinelcustomer.gemal…e+%26+Device+Driver&l=all

Get the driver appropriate for your machine. Install it, plug in the USB and restart K-ROSET.

Make a shortcut to KHlibraries folder and explore it through K-ROSET.

Mine was here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Kawasaki\K-ROSET\Hisui\KHIlibraries

Not to be confused with MyKHlibraries which holds files pertaining to your project. You won’t believe how many videos there are of people clicking through the entire tree structure multiple times.

I wasn’t able to execute a second simulation program if another K-ROSET window/project was open.

When attempting to learn the AS language I had my project open and wanted to observe the behavior of one of the sample projects. Only the window of K-ROSET that first loaded a project was able to connect to its virtual controller and thus execute the program. Any other project that was loaded after the initial project in a separate K-ROSET window would not run the program because it could not connect to its controller.

See your renamed objects on the simulation screen

Let’s use a teach point as an example. The first created teach point is named TP1 by K-ROSET and you decide to rename it MyFirstTP. However, on the main simulation view it is still labeled TP1. Turns out, the simulation screen by default displays an object’s comment field (Right-click MyFirstTP → Notes → Comment). I was not excited about updating the object’s comment fields just to keep the simulation view in sync. Fortunately, you can change this setting.

Go to the menu Plug-Ins → Options. In the Options dialog go to ‘Display’ then ‘Point’ and set the option to ‘Name’ as shown in the attached image.

The best kept secret that shouldn’t be a secret.

This is what prompted me to create this thread. There are four fantastic Kawasaki created introductory videos that are currently impossible to find. The main thing I hope to accomplish here is to elevate the awareness of these videos, hopefully increase their search engine rankings and perhaps even embarrass Kawasaki enough to promote them on their site. You can’t find them on Kawasaki’s own Youtube channel even if you search for “K-ROSET” or “Tutorial”.

I wish I had these at the beginning. In my opinion, these videos are the absolute best introduction to K-ROSET of any medium. They were provided to me when the robot owner asked about teaching materials on my behalf. Otherwise, I probably would never have found them. There might be other videos that do a good job of this and are easier to find but they are not in English so I can’t speak to that.

The videos were recorded using K-ROSET version 1.6.9. I noticed some small differences in my version (1.8.1) but nothing major.

I’m including how many views the video had at the time I viewed them. It’s almost criminal given the superb quality of the videos and how hard they are to find. Maybe that’s the way Kawasaki wants it but that makes zero sense given that they have a LITE version of K-ROSET which can be used to generate interest among potential robotic developers.

K-ROSET Training Webinar - Session 1

306 views on Dec. 2018

Overview of K-ROSET (01:00)
Software Environment (06:05)
Quick Builder (17:45)
Robot system concept and functions (33:10)

K-ROSET Training Webinar - Session 2

181 views on Dec. 2018

Project development and data handling (1:46)
Create a program table (15:04)
Plug-in functions (19:23)

K-ROSET Training Webinar - Session 3

134 views on Dec. 2018

Basic AS language instructions (3:21)
Edit and develop programs with KTools (13:47)
NOTE: Ktools did not come with our version of K-ROSET. We were quoted $2000 (usd) to purchase and declined the offer at the time of writing.
K-ROSET layout and PC-AS (22:57)
Handling Clamp (23:55)
Pendant (34:37)

K-ROSET Training Webinar - Session 4

93 views on Dec. 2018

Single Robot Simulation (1:23)
Multiple Robot Simulation (25:33)
NOTE: Built on the previous simulation

AS Language

Welcome to the programming syntax that shares a name with a common English word as well as a popular alias command in the SQL language. As you can imagine, trying to find anything in a standard search engine is fruitless.

First thing you should do is download the manual (attached) that I found here although reading it front to back is not really the best way to start learning this language. You’ll eventually need to be familiar with it but to get started I used the above videos in conjunction with the sample projects to get introduced to the language. Your mileage may vary. However, I do recommend at least reading over the following pages even if you don’t understand them at first.

3-4 Pose Information
3-5 Pose Information II
3-6 Try to understand the top table especially “Suggested Usage”
3-12 Variable naming syntax
4-17 BREAK

6-1 Motion instruction commands
6-16 Other common commands
6-24 Clamp and gun commands

11-1 Program examples
A-39 AS Language index (would be nice to have this in an electronic filterable/searchable table format)

Considering my background I’ll probably have more to say about this language as I learn it. That’s all for now.

Thanks for letting me know that. The videos were still there it was just they way this forum was handling the URL links I had put into it. I altered the post without the URL formatting so you can get to the videos easier.