Description Device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots
Technical Field
The present invention falls within the technical sector of process control equipment and relates in particular to a device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots
Background Art
As is known, in order to perform the reproduction, to scale, of artistic works by means of cutting and boring, use is generally made of the normal skill of craftsmen in the sector who, from a free-hand drawing, using resins cast in moulds, are able to reproduce, by means of carving operations and fretwork, artistic works which, in some cases, are of a fairly complex nature This type of activity, however, involves, for each production stage, a great deal of time, a lot of waste material, defects in reproduction due to human error in approximation, and unnecessary costs, not only for the process as such, but also because the specialized labour in the sector has a high cost, being a dying profession
As regards reproduction on a small scale, on the other hand, moulding equipment is used which, however, is not very precise and does not always provide a perfect reproduction of the artistic work recorded
Disclosure of the invention
In this situation, a technical problem underlying the present invention is that of eliminating substantially the aforementioned limitations by producing and providing a device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots, which, in an automatic manner and depending on the incoming inputs, allows one to produce, to scale without error and rapidly, a reproduction of an artistic work
The aforementioned object and others as well which will emerge more clearl below are achieved by a device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots as claimed in the following claims
Further characteristics and advantages will emerge more clearly from the description of an embodiment of a device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots
This description will be provided hereinbelow, with reference to the accompanying drawing, provided purely by way of a non-limiting example, in which Figure I shows a block diagram of the device according to the invention With reference to Figure 1 , 1 denotes globally and surrounded by a broken line a device for controlling anthropomoφhic robots, in its structural entirety 2 denotes a source for detecting drawings, photographs, sketches, etc From this source 2, by means of a scanner 3, photo CD, telecamera or similar equipment, an optical recording of the object to be reproduced is performed and then the corresponding form detected is digital lzed point by point
At this point there is a personal computer station 4, connected to a similar and successive PC station 5, where the mathematical and geometric processing operations are performed for obtaining the measurements and the basis of a corresponding three-dimensional mathematical model In short, in these stations the spatial points are processed into ASCII files, by means of which mathematical movement references may be serially transmitted to the robot
A workstation 6 and the PC 5 then allow the parts which are to be milled to be processed using a plurality of software which determine the formats to be executed on the basis of the data acquired
From the workstation 6 or from the PC 5 it is then possible to transmit the data to a further PC station 7 which processes all the execution procedures to be transmitted, as interface data, to an anthropomoφhic robot 8 so as to provide a physical product 9 corresponding to the figure reproduced in the drawing 2
The PCs 4, 5 and 7 and the workstation 6 are linked via an ethernet board After describing the general features of the device according to the present invention from a structural point of view, a functional explanation thereof is now provided 5 In brie starting from a photograph 2 or any other medium (drawing, sketch, etc ). the latter is digitalized by means of a scanner 3 and sent to computer stations shown in the figures by the blocks 4 and 5 both directly and indirectly, so that the forms and the measurements of the object to produced are acquired The transfer may be direct or indirect depending on the complexity of the figure
10 to be detected and hence the type of points to be considered with respect to the system of three-dimensional axes
Via a workstation 6 or the PC 5 it is then possible to model grids, verifying the correctness of the processed object by means of the interfacing personal computer 7
15 This personal computer 7 serves as a physical and logic interface for the robot 8 of the anthropomoφhic type, since the latter requires suitably coded data, and is therefore supplied by means of cartesian coordinates with all the horizontal, vertical, oblique and starting or stopping and gripping movements of the arm of a milling cutter for machining a material in order to provide the finished object
20 As regards the robot 8, with respect to the existing embodiment, it is a JS 10
KAWASAKI robot which is structured so that, once the data has been acquired, it processes the spatial points by means of dedicated software so as to make the anthropomoφhic arm with which it is provided (not shown in the Figure) perform a series of operations
? *- The execution software for the workstation 6 are those of the CAD-CAM type, which serve for the modelling and five-axis milling of products of various types This software has been developed in order to perform the aforementioned functions As regards the personal computers 4. 5 and 7, they are currently 486 processors
which perform the measurement, modelling and transmission of the data serially to the robot 8 and use modelling software products such as Fotomodeller, Art Cam and Autocad, which are personalized for operations of this kind In particular, the PC 7 is provided with interfacing software for the robot 8 which otherwise would not be able to mteφret the data received
From the scanner 3 it is possible, as already mentioned before, to pass into the PC4 and then pass to the PC5 and then to the PC7, or else pass to the PC5, and then to the workstation 6 and consequently to the PC7 It is also possible to transfer from the PC4 directly to the workstation 6 All this depends on the complexity of the work to be produced and hence whether several processing operations are necessary in order to calculate the points which are used in space The invention thus achieves the preset objects In fact, with such a device, it is possible to perform in a correct, rapid and safe manner, without any major wastage of material, any artistic work obtained from a photograph or sketches, adapting it also to any complexities
Obviously further parametric and system-related advantages are possible, all of which falling within the inventive scope of the present invention