SIMULATION & PROGRAMMING OF ELECTRONIC AUTOMATED ROBOTICS
Initial Virtual Factory
Modelling and Simulation
In the early stages of the project the team contructed a basic level Virtual Factory consisting of two robots, a gripper, a spot-welder gun, a clamp and two individual car parts. The aim in producing this Initial Virtual Factory was to gain experience in the basic functions available in both the Siemens Process Designer and Process Simulate software packages. It was therefore decided that the Initial Virtual Factory concept should be made as simplistic as possible. The factory would simply take the two individudal car parts and place them in a clamp. The parts would then be welded together before being released by the clamp and collected by the material-handling robot. Once this had been completed, the process could restart in a continuous cycle. This process was deemed sufficient for foundation level learning of the software packages.
Controlling the Simulation
The simulation created above was purely time-based. This meant that the simulation ran from a predefined sequence of processes. In order to produce a complete Virtual Factory with associated control program, the simulation had to be changed into an event-based simulation, whereby the simulation is controlled by logic. Logic was input using various methods including: Transitions, Modules and Logic Blocks. After each type was applied, the simulation was debugged and validated. This was performed using the 'Simulation Panel' within Process Simulate. An emergency stop button was also added using logic - this represented the physical environment. Once all logic was completed, the Virtual Factory was fully tested to ensure a coherent and working simulation had been produced.
Click on the video on the right to see the factory running based on logic.
