Moving with a line tracking object.

    Let's say I have a bunch of kittens on my conveyor line.


    Because I'm a decent person, I want to make a robot to pet these kittens. Trouble is, they're on a moving conveyor.
    Luckily, they're line- tracked, and the position is stored in a position register PR[k]. I have a pre-defined path that I want the robot to use to pet these cats as efficiently as possible (let's say PR[1-40]. It's a very complex technique).


    How do I convolude the path of the kitten and the path of the petting motion to get a series of well-pet kittens?

    You need the Linetracking option installed on your robot for this kind of applications.


    The general idea is, that you have your main program, where robot does everything that's not tracking related and you have your tracking program, which at one point is being called from the main program.


    The tracking program only contains the motion commands, which are to be performed during tracking. In your case it can be a list of motions through your PRs. Tracking program has all its motions assigned to a tracking frame, which is just like a user frame, but this one moves together with a conveyor (you know the conveyor's speed thanks to an encoder). So you have all your motions programmed relative to a tracking frame.


    But how does the tracking program make sure, that it follows the kittens, and doesn't go a bit in front of them or behind them? That's what you need a trigger for. You need a sensor (or in more complex systems a vision system), which will detect a kitten. When the kitten is detected, the system knows, that the kitten reached the origin of tracking frame and from now on, the system can follow the kitten with the conveyor's encoder.


    The principle of operation of linetracking systems is very easy, but a bit tricky to explain in a post like that. If you have the linetracking manual available, it should explain it more clearly.

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