Posts by cluelessguy

Quote from TygerDawg

First things first: decide what it is you wish to teach your students.

• fundamental exposure to robot technology
• simple programming via Teach Pendant Programming TPP
• more complex programming with structured language
• simple pick & place or more complex path applications
• systems integration (sensors, grippers, vision systems...)

I'd say all of that starting from the easiest approach (teach pendant) up to structured language programming. If we go for an ABB Yumi arm we'll take advantage of its gripper which comes with vacuum and vision (as options) as well.

Our students can program in C and python and have an electronic background while lacking on pneumatics and mechanics.

I consider RoboDK an easy way to approach industrial robots while being less useful if we go for an ABB solution with its own simulating environment (RobotStudio).

We didn't consider minor cobot vendors because we will need a well established solution with good support, both as documentation and people to reach when issues arise. Then there's the market presence in our area to consider when choosing a particular brand. Industrial robots are more and more present while cobots are not so choosing a platform that suits both should be better.

Thanks for your answer, it's really helpful.

Quote from SkyeFire

Well... the "offline programming" requirement is liable to be pricey. It's also a wild-west landscape of multiple vendors. For example, Process Simulate can be used for (almost?) any robot brand, but is ~$20k per seat, per year, for the base product, before you add any of the brand-specific postprocessors.

RoboDK is much more affordable, but still normally $3k/seat (I think?), and less featured. And you'd need an add-on postprocessor to output to a specific robot brand.

Thankfully we already have 30 RoboDK licenses. I've run through some tutorials and it seem the right choice for a high school industrial robots only simulation (webots, Coppelia etc. are different beasts with different audiences).

Quote from SkyeFire

ABB RobotStudio, with a simulation license, offers a user experience that's very close to programming the actual real-world robot, and ABB Rapid is a nice language for programming in (IMO). It also provides a decent environment for creating and simulating other hardware (conveyors, rotary tables, etc). I would definitely ask if they offer a reduced price for education, or a site license.

RobotStudio without a license is still used as a configuration&programming interface to the real robot, so the user experience carries over nicely.

ABB's educational offer includes Robot Studo licenses so I guess we'recovered. We always ask for such licenses when asking for a quotation.

Quote from SkyeFire

URs are nice, but in my (limited and somewhat outdated) experience, the offline programming experience was... not great. It was the only offline-programming environment that was free, though, so there's that. URs aren't really built for offline programming, though. They're more aimed at giving hands-on programmers an iPad-like experience, and "programming" by literally physically pushing the robot around.

This confirm my first impression. I tried their simulator - it's a replica of the programming environment of their teach pendant rather than a PC development environment, which they don't offer at all - and I found not good enough for our intended use. It rans natively on linux - but requires some old libraries so installing is not easy - or runs on a virtual machine image inside Virtualbox. I met some people from UR and they proposed RoboDK as a companion solution.

At the moment we lean towards ABB also because most high school textbooks here cover their products (same as Siemens for PLCs). We'll talk to Yaskawa in a few days and we'll ask for an advice to integrators in our area to get more information.

Hi everybody, I'm new here!

I'm an high school teacher from a tech school in Italy. Our curriculum include automation, electronics and control systems courses and we are going to expand it including robotics. We need a solution from some of the vendors out there including:

• small robot
• gripper
• controller and teach pendand
• software licences for 30 PC for simulation and offline programming

to use it in a school lab for theory and practical activities. We took basic courses with Yaskawa and ABB last year but we still haven't choose the right solution for our particular scenario.

We looked at cobots first because:

• we need a small robots with negligible payload
• it must be as safe as possible (no cage and people near it)
• we need to be able to move it easily (no 400V, lightweight, wheeled base)
• budget

Offline programming is important because we'll be using the robot two people at a time while the rest of the class works at the PC. This considered, while auto learning, free drive waypoint setup, and teach pendant programming is fine, it can't be the only solution available. It's too limiting. Moreover each vendor has its own closed platform. We need some solution that's not too far from what's in use in the industry (bigger industrial robots), at least programming wise.

I've personally talked to UR and got a quote for an UR3E education kit but I'm not convinced it's the right solution because offline programming is klunky at best. We also asked ABB and we're going to hear from Yaskawa soon. While we ask for cobots we plan to use the same software used for industrial robots programming. ABB's single arm Yumi could be a good choice, considering that the smallest product from Yaskawa is quite big (10Kg payload, 1,4m reach). We could also ask from other vendor of course. There are many more factors to consider: documentation, training courses and support for example. Form the programming standpoint I can't recall what's best/easier to use and that's important too. Lastly we're told Yaskawa is leading the market share here in Italy and that japanese solutions are the future while ABB is losing market share. Is that right?

Any advice form you people?

Thanks!