Yaskawa
eLearning
The Technical Training Department of
Yaskawa America Incorporated Presents...
Features and Benefits of Singular Control
Hi, I am Micah Stuedemann
In this video will give an overview of what
Singular Control is, explain some of the
programming components using an example,
and explain the uses of the Pendant Interface.
So, what is Singular Control?
It started with an idea that all industrial devices
could be controlled by one source.
Yaskawa has done this by including the
kinematic equations for these devices in
the MPiec firmware.
So you can have induction motors, servomotors,
many different types of robotic mechanisms
all operated by a single MPiec controller.
The easiest way to explain
Singular Control is through an example.
Here I have the Singular Control demo.
The first station is made up of an HP20 6-axis articulated arm.
It takes the plastic squares from the
synch conveyor holder and
puts them on the feed conveyor.
The second station uses a
camera to detect the orientation of the
plastic squares.
The third consists of two MPP3H Delta robots
that take the scattered plastic squares and place
them uniformly on another conveyor.
The final station contains a synch belt
with Sigma-5 servomotors that create
separation between groups of five
plastic squares and places them into a
holder controlled by Sigma Trac linear motor.
Here is a simplified diagram of
the Singular Control demo.
Let's look at the control system of this machine.
Commonly in the motion control industry
the robots in this system would be
programmed on a controller using their
own programming software.
The synch belt and the other conveyors would be
programmed using a different
motion controller and different software.
Additional code must be created in each
controller to talk between all of the controllers.
This also means that multiple software
projects need to be maintained for the machine.
All said, you see that the
traditional programming solution can be
quite complex on a machine like this.
Yaskawa Singular Control platform
simplifies this application by allowing
the robot and the conveyors to be
programmed using MotionWorks IEC and
commanded by one MPiec controller.
This in turn, reduces the number of projects
needed for the system - down to a single project.
This is also beneficial
when maintaining the machine because
only one project needs to be modified
versus multiple projects in different
manufacturer software platforms.
I have created a project in MotionWorks IEC
that simulates the functionality
of the Singular Control demo and shows how
simple it is to change out mechanisms in the project.
For now, I will be focusing on the
motion profile of the robotic arm which will later
be changed out for a more economical T-Bot.
This robotic arm moves an item from the
lower conveyor and places it onto the upper conveyor.
The move profile is very simple and is
performed using the six function blocks
shown here.
Here's a graphical representation of
what is happening as the positioning
program runs.
Looking at the robot arm, the six moves
produced the motion of picking up, moving over,
placing down, moving back up, back over,
and back down for the next part.
Since there is only one project to
control everything, Singular Control allows
robot mechanisms to be interchanged
seamlessly in the code.
This is very useful when prototyping or
maintaining a machine because it means
that you can easily swap out one
mechanism with another mechanism.
This same concept allows you to reuse code
from a previous project with a new
robotic mechanism.
Let's look at this point in a little
more detail.
In the following example, I will switch the
robot arm mechanism for the T-Bot mechanism
and have the T-Bot perform
the same move as the robot arm.
Notice that each of the six move blocks
have an access group input with a
variable called RobotArm.
This access group exists in the hardware
configuration of MotionWorks IEC.
In hardware configuration, I set up a T-Bot
access group using 2 Sigma-7 servos.
The same concept applies to any other
supported mechanisms such as gantry systems
and different types of H-Bots and T-Bots.
At the bottom of the list,
we have the custom Delta robots along with the
MPP3H and MPP3S Motoman Delta robots.
Expect to see this list grow
as more mechanisms are added in
future firmware releases.
Once the hardware configuration is saved,
the required toolboxes are added to the
programming window along with the robot
arm axis group variable and the
T-Bot axis group variable.
To switch to the T-Bot, the axis group inputs to the
6 motion blocks just need to be changed
to the T-Bot access group variable.
As you can see, this is basically the
only programming change needed to
accommodate an entirely different mechanism.
When changing out a mechanism,
there are important considerations.
One of these considerations is the orientation of the
coordinate plane for the mechanism.
A robot operates in the XYZ frame and in
this example the base of the robot is mounted
such that the motion path is in the XZ frame.
The T-Bot operates in the XZ frame.
Since the coordinate systems match, this
makes the mechanism swap relatively seamless.
If the robot arm had
been mounted differently, then additional
programming would need to be used to
convert the motion profile.
Now let's talk about the Robot Teach Pendant.
Traditionally, each robot in the system
has its own Teach Pendant.
This is used as the main interface to the robot
and will allow the user to manually jog the robot,
teach movement points and program the robot.
These pendants are of
different models and contain the
specific programming for each robot.
If you want to monitor or jog a robot
you need to learn and use that robot
specific pendant.
With Singular Control,
the pendent interface is connected to the
MPiec controller, not the robot.
This allows the pendant to interface
with different robots without being
directly connected to them.
This way, the machine operator is only required to
know how to operate one pendant.
The pendant interface is used by adding
a teach pendant driver for each of the
robots in the MotionWorks IEC project.
Singular Control also allows any pendant
that communicates via Modbus TCP to
potentially be used as the Singular Control
pendant as long as the screens
are created to communicate with the
teach pendant driver.
Yaskawa has pre-made screens that can be used if the
InduSoft program is running on the pendant.
This allows the user to find a pendant
that fits the application and have it
work with Yaskawa's hardware.
The pendant interface can also be
customized to act as an HMI that can be
used to monitor and perform test moves
of the entire machine.
All programming is done in MotionWorks IEC,
but the pendant interface is useful for teaching points
to be used by MotionWorks IEC in the project.
Singular Control as a whole
provides a centralized control source,
simplified programming,
flexibility to change up mechanisms with only minor
project changes and the means to reduce
the time needed to set up a complex
multi-mechanism system.
Thank you for watching.
To learn more about Singular Control visit
www.yaskawa.com