A novel concept for realistic simulation of industrial pick and place applications

Current automated production requires a high amount of production flexibility. In order to achieve a more efficient use of the available resources and a faster time to production, digital commissioning is used; this allows efficient planning of production environments before a real implementation. At present the design and planning of robot-aided production environments, leaves a lot to be desired. Focussing on Pick & Place applications, a very common task in production environments, we present simulation approaches that allow realistic representation of product flow and the arising dynamic changes within product flow. The following paper proposes a direct integration of Pick & Place planning into a robot simulation software as well as methods for the exchange of simulation models between software solutions. We will present two approaches for Pick & Place simulation along with future possibilities to combine both methods.