I would like to understand the way Mech-Viz sends points to a robot when it is controlled using Mech-Viz and a standard interface communication mode. For instance, if I set up a “fixed move” in Mech-Viz from point A to point B, what kind of points does the robot receive? Does it only receive the final destination point B, or does it receive all the points along the path from A to B that were part of the path planning? If only the final point is sent, how does the robot perform collision detection?
In the standard interface communication mode, there are two commands for sending path points to the robot, with variations in the data format depending on the communication protocol used. However, the fundamental commands used remain the same. Under the standard interface mode, Mech-Viz utilizes two commands to send path points to the robot: Command 205, “Get Planned Path,” and Command 210, “Get Waypoint with Depalletizing Planning Data.”
Command 205 sends a maximum of 20 path points to the robot:
A waypoint is composed of 8 data items: the first 6 items are the pose, the 7th is the label, and the 8th is the velocity.
Pose: Cartesian coordinates (in mm) and Euler angles (in degree)s, or joint positions (in degrees). The type is determined by the “waypoint pose type” parameter in the sent command.
Label: The integer label corresponding to the obtained pose. If the labels in the Mech-Vision project are strings, please use the “Label Mapping” Step before the “Procedure Out” Step to map the labels to integers. If there are no labels in the project, the value of this parameter is 0.
Velocity: The non-zero value in front of the percentage sign in the velocity parameter of move-type Steps.
Command 210 allows you to retrieve only one path point at a time. The waypoint may be of a Vision Move Step, or of another move-type Step. A waypoint may contain pose, velocity, tool information, work object information, etc.
Waypoints in a planned path can be divided into two types: those of the “Vision Move” Step and those of other move-type Steps.
All waypoints contain the following data: motion type (joint motion or linear motion), tool number and velocity.
The waypoints of the “Vision Move” Step also contain depalletizing planning data.
If custom ports are defined for the “Procedure Out” Step in Mech-Vision, then the waypoints of the “Vision Move” Step also contain custom port outputs
For more information, please refer to: TCP/IP Interface Commands
In brief, only the final point is sent. It’s the same for both using Mech-Viz and a standard interface.
As a supplementary note, the Mech-Viz will calculate a feasible collision-free path from point A to point B. But when sending, only the final point is sent.
Obviously, the robot must execute according to the parameters set in Mech-Viz. When doing so, there are little difference between the path calculated in Mech-Viz and the actual path of robot, and the collision detection is effective.
On the contrary, if the robot executes with different parameters, say, joint move in Mech-Viz but actually the robot moves linealy, then the actual path will be different from that being planned, thus the robot is at risk of collision.
