Plotting a New Path With Python

Picture this: IRH was contracted to provide general programming support by a company using industrial robots for rapid prototyping and development. After spending more time with the R&D Team (and their robots) and getting to understand their immediate and future robot needs, we noticed that the existing process for driving robot motion wasn’t driving the motion nearly as well as it was driving everyone nuts and stymieing the Team’s ability to innovate. It was time to put the rapid back into rapid prototyping.

So what was the existing process? To drive robot motion, the R&D Team was using a time-consuming and clunky method (the antithesis of rapid development) that required coordinates from a CAD to be exported, manually parsed to a stripped down CSV, and then converted and imported into Epson's RC+ Programming Environment as a point table. Major changes to the motion design or the implementation of new motion designs necessitated this laborious coordinate translation and importation process to be repeated, resulting in extended downtime when prototyping and testing. This manual process took upwards of an hour to complete and there were numerous points where data could be accidentally manipulated, creating errors in the new point table. 

Our solution? Automate the process by writing a Python script that would convert the CAD coordinates to an Epson point table in seconds. We wrote the script so that introduction of new robot positioning would no longer pose major disruptions to workflow, enabling the R&D Team to be more flexible and less concerned about whether or not the robot would function when given new positioning instructions. The script was written to be robust but flexible, to support current and future programming needs, and accessible enough for robot operators to update on their own regardless of programming skill. Best of all, the script enabled the R&D Team to focus on what they do best, innovating - and quickly! No longer bogged down by time-consuming copying and pasting, they could begin testing more motion designs faster than ever before with increased confidence. Since deploying the script, the Team has unlocked a 2-3x increase in design creation and testing.

That’s the power of automation, simplified.