3million targets in ABB RobotStudio

AlexLu

In our application, we want RobotStudio to handle 3 million targets on a ship hull, which is 15 meters long.

We did a simple test. On the surface of a part, we generate 1000 curves, and then generate 3000 curves on each curve.

We tried it on a P4 3.0GHz pc with 4 GB RAM. We found that our computer took infinite time to generate the curves. We guess that a better pc or work station is needed.

It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could give me some recommendations about the hardware requirements.

 

 

AndersJ

Hi AlexLu,
3 million targets sounds very extreme... RS will never run smoothly with this amount of targets in one station, so you will definitely have to change your way of working here. RS is not designed to manage this so you will never find hardware making it possible either. I recommend you to slit up your targets in segments (many...) and work with one at a time in RS.
Best regards,

__________________
Anders Jahnberg 
ABB Automation Technologies 

AlexLu

Hi, AndersJ,

Thank you for your input. I have two more questions:

(1) Is it possible to handle 3 million targets in robot controller?

(2) If not, how to attack this issue?

BR

PerSvensson

Hi
Haven't tried 3 million targets in a robotcontroller but I'm quite sure that the memory isn't enough to handle 3 million targets not even if they are inline targets.

One way is to split your path's/segments into seperate modules (stored on the harddrive) and load/unload them in runtime.

AlexLu

Hi, Per,

Actually, that's our plan to split the paths too. My question is:

(1) How many targets should we put in one module while the perfermance is not affected and we still have enough memory? We do not want the robot sit there waiting too many times.

(2) is it possible to increase the memory of the controller?

Thanks,

Alex

PerSvensson

Hi
1. I did a project a couple of years ago (on a S4C+ controller, so probably the IRC5 would be better) where I had around 2500 targets in one module and still I had a lot of memory left (don't remember how much)

2. One the old controllers(before S4C+) you could increase the memory to a certain level. Haven't seen an option like that on S4C+ or IRC5.

John Wiberg

 I'm totally curious. What possible solution could demand 3 000 000 targets for 1 robot controller?

I have never seen a robot cell above 20 000 targets, so that is quite a step up to 3 000 000. What is it that you want to do?

AlexLu

Milling, grinding and buffing of a 15m long boat hull.

Knud E Lindberg

Have you considered feeding the robot with target from a PC, by using RAB, in that way the robot controller do not have to store all of the 3.000.000 target at once

AlexLu

Using RAB is one approach that works. i could split the targets into small files and then load and execute them one by one. However, one PC is needed.

I have one plan, but not sure if it works:

(1) Store all the targets, in one file or multiple smaller files,  on the robot controller's hard disk.

(2) Read them in automatically while executing the move.

Then, no external PC is needed.

 

 

 

 

 

irbcam

This is exactly the approach taken by the IRBCAM software, which can execute more than 3 million targets, depending on the size of the harddisk. During grinding and milling the robot speed is relatively slow, so there is time to load the targets form the harddisk without disturbing the smoothness of the path.