Robot cell integration by means of application-P'n'P

For SMEs, which work typically with small to medium lot sizes, fast adaptability of robot and surrounding cell to new products and processes is much more important than small cycle times. To make this possible the programming of robots and especially robot cells and the integration of new devices into these robot cells has to be much easier than today. The approach of this paper is to offer the user of a robot cell in SME-environments an easy means of programming a cell without the need to do the configuration. Therefore, commands that represent the functionality of devices have to be offered. A concept and a first implementation are presented to describe the functionality of devices on the one hand and the required functionality of processes on the other hand. Based on this information a configuration module is able to determine what processes can be executed by the available set of devices and therefore what commands the user can choose from on a HMI.