Help needed with robot position tracking

    Hi all,

    I'm fairly new to robot programming and currently I'm trying to track the position of my robot to assist recovery, at the moment we have a program that uses the LPOS to determine which zone of the machine it's in but I started testing out different methods of doing this and wrote a few BG logic programs that write the X Y and X positions to registers and then another program that works out which zone it's in based on the register value and turns on a DO to match the zone (mainly wanted to do it this way so the PLC could also be aware of the robot position in case of future developments), only problem I can see is that the position in the register doesn't update when the robot is moved with the pendant therefore the robot could think it was in another zone when it's not so when I recover via the HMI the wrong program could be called. If anyone could assist with ways to improve the program I currently have or another method of doing this. (I'll attach screenshots showing the program I've mentioned)

    You can define reference positions under the setup menu that do pretty much exactly what you're describing. The positions need to be specified as joint angles +/- a number of degrees, which can be determined pretty easily by putting the robot in the middle of a zone and then moving to the edges, and doing some basic math to get the angles needed.

    Quote from HawkME

    You need to use LPOS in a specific UF and UT in order for your recovery to be deterministic. Another option is DCS zones which can be sent to your PLC via DOs.

    For the LPOS method we always use the the same tool and frame for our recovery programs. I've never used DCS zones before but I'm familiar with how they work, will they work whilst also moving the robot with the pendant? Also is DCS an additional option, we're currently using M10iD16s robots

    DCS is a paid option. You would specifically need DCS Cartesian position check.


    It is safety rated and runs continuously on a separate processor. It monitors all robot movement, either manual jogging, or automatic motion.

    Quote from pdl

    DCS is a paid option. You would specifically need DCS Cartesian position check.


    It is safety rated and runs continuously on a separate processor. It monitors all robot movement, either manual jogging, or automatic motion.

    Okay I thought so, is there any other ways of doing what I described without these paid options these aren't our robots we are providing a machine for a customer and the customers generally aren't interested in DCS so any workarounds with what we currently have?

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