Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Biography: Fusaomi Nagata received the B.E. degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Kyushu Institute of Technology in 1985, and the D.E. degree from the Faculty of Engineering Systems and Technology at Saga University in 1999. He was a research engineer with Kyushu Matsushita Electric Co. from 1985 to 1988, and a special researcher with Fukuoka Industrial Technology Centre from 1988 to 2006. He is currently a professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University of Science, Yamaguchi, Japan and also a Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. His research interests include deep convolutional neural networks for visual inspection of resin molded articles, intelligent control for industrial robots and its application to machining process, e.g., robot sander, mold polishing robot, desktop NC machine tool with compliance control capability, machining robot with robotic CAM system, and 3D printer-like data interface for a machining robot have been developed for wood material, aluminum PET bottle mold, LED lens mold, foamed polystyrene, and so on.

Speech Title: CAD/CAM Interface for Industrial Robots

Abstract: In these several decades, industrial robots and peripheral technology have remarkably progressed and been improved from the both aspects of hardware and software. However, it is not easy for robots’ users to find some useful interface software which can directly deal with the data, e.g., CLS (Cutter Location Source) data, outputted from CAD/CAM systems. In this presentation, three types of CAD/CAM interfaces are proposed for industrial robots. They are the post processor for FANUC industrial robots, the direct servo system for DENSO industrial robots with an ORiN (Open Resource interface for the Network) middle ware, and the interpreter-like controller for an educational robot called DOBOT.

Without conventional teaching process and other specialized tools, another proposed outline font handler produces smoothed desired trajectories called CLS data from various kinds of outline fonts, so that a promising data interface between commercially-provided industrial robots and widely- used design tools such as Illustrator and Photoshop is realized. Actually, various kinds of outline fonts are available on Illustrator and are easily converted into DXF data. Also, high-end CAD/CAM systems such as Creo can import the DXF data and generate CLS data. When an original outline font has some curved line, the main processor of CAD/CAM generally constructs the line, i.e., CLS data, with minute straight lines by a linear approximation. Therefore, CLS data interpolation is effective to smooth such a linear approximated trajectory. To cope with the need, an extended spline interpolation method based on 3 rd or 5 th order curved lines, which interpolates original CLS data while avoiding undesirable oscillations, is further proposed.

The usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed methods are evaluated through simulations and/or actual drawing, engraving experiments of outline fonts using an industrial robot FANUC R2000iC, DENSO VS068 and an education robot DOBOT.

Keywords: Industrial robot, CAD/CAM, CLS data, Outline font, Extended spline interpolation, FANUC R2000iC, DENSO VS068, DOBOT