An Innovative Approach of Industrial Robot Programming Using Virtual Reality for the Design of Production Systems Layout

Current trends in the design of manufacturing systems are aimed at shortening the pre-production phase. Designing CAD (Computer Aided Design) data and creating simulation scenarios are currently strategic solutions for designing different variants of manufacturing systems. The research intention is to point out the possibilities of hardware connectivity and software tools of the present. The primary intent of this article is the capabilities of industrial robot programming by utilizing the interaction of several robot online method, OLP (Offline Robot Programming) and VR OLP computing methods with regard to the applicability of the proposed outputs to the real environment. As a supporting simulation tool ABB RobotStudio was used. As imaging hardware tools were used glasses designed to be displayed by the immersive VR environment HTC Vive. The article presents methods and experiments on a case study where the interaction between the immersive environment of VR and the area of classical OLP programming was studied. The immediate interaction of the classic OLP method of industrial robot programming in the PC desktop software environment and the immersive VR environment helps to shorten the time needed to create industrial robot programming. It is precisely such an interactive link between OLP programming and real-time imaging of an industrial robot in a VR environment is one of the Industry 4.0 strategy implementation area.