A Reprogrammable Industrial Robot Control System

Aspects of a control system that employs a minicomputer for the programming and control of industrial robots are described. The control system hierarchy, the system interface, and the software controller design are presented along with the mode of operation and the methods of robot training and on-line testing. The features of the robot control language (Alfa) and a typical program structure of material handling processes are described. Alfa is a high-level problem-oriented language that allows the operator to program the robot's activities, including process and timer interrupt handling, effectively, without resorting to lower level languages.