ENGN4627 - Robotics.

Scorbot Information.

Tutorial for the Scorbot-ER VII

Robert Mahony,
Dep. Engineering, ANU, ACT, 0200, Australia.
The Department of Engineering, has two Scorbot-ER VII five degree of freedom robotic
manipulators and two Controller-A control units. Each combined system has a typical
functionality of a commercial robotic system. There are 4 components in each robotic
system:
Scorbot-ER VII Manipulator arm: The Scorbot-ER VII arm is a 5 degree of freedom
robotic arm designed for education purposes. The base/shoulder/elbow configuration
is a standard industrial anthropomorphic manipulator configuration. The wrist mechanism is a two degree of freedom (Y-Z co-located axis) design. The gearing system
is belt gear reduction followed by a harmonic drive gear driven by brush-commutated
permanent magnet motors rated to 18A at 24VDC. This configuration ensures the system is relatively safe for operation outside a safety enclosure, however, the maximum
workload that can be carried is 2kg (including the weight of the end effector).
Controller-A: The proprietary Scorbot controller has the ACL programming language
burnt into EPROM. It has the potential to control 11 axes that are separated into
3 groups: Group-A is the the first 6 axes corresponding to the Scorbot-ER VII and
gripper, axes 1-5 are rated to 18A at 24V while axis 6 (for the gripper) is rated to 2A
at 12V; Group-B is for peripheral devices, axes-7 & 8 are both rated to 18A at 24V
for linear-slidebase, rotating-table or conveyer belt peripherals. Group-C axes are for a
second peripheral device, axes 9 & 11 rated to 18A at 24V while axis 10 is rated to 2A
at 12V. Only axes 1-6 have operable driver cards installed in the ANU controller unit.
Advanced Control Language: The controller-A unit is programmed in the advanced
control language (ACL) developed by Eshed Robotec Pty Ltd. The ACL protocol
allows both direct control commands and edited programs to be run. Direct commands are sent in serial ascii directly to the controller, edited programs are best written
in an ascii and downloaded. ACL is not case sensitive.
Advanced Terminal Software: The advanced terminal software provides a good means
of communication with the controller unit. In fact, any ascii serial connection could
be used for direct communication with the controller unit, however, the ATS software
offers backup and print facilities as well as a better command interface than is available
in a standard serial channel.
i) ATS. The ATS software can be activated from the icon on the desktop, or from
a DOS prompt window (change directory to the directory containing ATS and
type ATS. Commands entered on the command line of the terminal are interpreted
directly by the controller unit. Programs can be entered directly in edit mode
using edit command.

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Scorbot Information.

ii) ATS-offline. An ascii text file can be downloaded directly to the controller unit
using the download command in a DOS prompt
DOWNLOAD /R /Y filename.dnl
The .dnl file is written as though the commands were to be entered directly in the
ATS.

Safety First

First and foremost, look after your own safety when working with the robot. Do not become
blase and use your common sense.
The following list of safety measures should be followed while working with the robot.
i) Check that the manipulator workspace is free of obstacles before operation of the
robot.
ii) Make sure loose hair and clothing is tied back when you work with the robot.
iii) Always home the robot before use.
iv) Verify that you can reach the red abort button on the teach pendant while the robot
is operating (the red emergency button on the controller can also be used if reachable
without passing into the range of the robot). One person should always be in a position
to abort control using the emergency switch during operation.
v) If you abort the motion of the robot at any time using the red emergency button or
the Abort button on the teach pendant you will clear the encoder reference register.
After any use of the abort button you must home the robot again!
vi) Do not enter the robots safety range or touch the robot during operation.
vii) If you need move into the robot workspace when it is not in use, then disable the
motors of the robot using the green switch on the controller.
viii) Do not drive the robot arm into any physical obstacle deliberately.
ix) Do not use physical force to move or stop any part of the robot arm - unless it is to
avoid injuring a human.
x) If the robot impacts the workspace it should trigger the impact protection override
and all motors will halt. To recover from this situation:
a. Depress the green motor switch on the controller unit to turn off the motors.
b. Manually move the robot arm until it is no longer in contact with the environment.
c. Type CLRBUF into the ATS command window to clear the movement buffer
and ensure the robot doesnt try the same movement again when you turn it on
again.
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Scorbot Information.

d. Switch on the motors with the green button.

e. Use the Teach-pendant to manoeuvre the robot to a safe pose or use the MOVE
command to reposition the robot in safe position.
Note: If the abort button was not used then the robot should still retain the encoder
references and be able to be used without running the homing routine. If in doubt, it
is a good idea to move the robot to a known home position and visually check that the
encoder references are correct if they are incorrect the robot will be wrongly positioned.
If you are still in doubt then home the robot again.
xi) Always leave the robot in the parked home position with all power switches in the
off position at the end of every session.

Initialising the robot:

i) Turn on the controller and motors.
ii) Open up a DOS prompt and change directory to C:\ATS

iii) Run the advanced terminal software by typing ATS.

iv) Turn the controller on by typing CON in the ATS window. Alternatively the control
can be activated or deactivated from the Teach-pendant by pressing Control On/Off.
v) Home the robot by using the HOME command in ATS environment. The robot can also
be homed with the Teach-pendant:
Press: Run
Press: 0
Press: Enter
It is important that the robot is homed every time that the controller is
turned on or after any situation in which it is possible that the encoder
count registers are invalidated. This happens when any of the emergency
abort switches are thrown. The robot should not require homing if only
the green motor switch has been thrown or if there was a normal joint
impact or thermal overload error.
vi) After homing the robot is in the parked or parked home position. Define a reference
point at this position. Using the teach pendant:
Press: Record position
Press: 01
Press: Enter
Using the ATS command line interface:
DEFP 01

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Scorbot Information.

HERE 01
When working on the worktable, return the manipulator to the parked home position
(using the move command not the homing routine) to avoid knocking the manipulator
arm.
The manipulator arm should always be left in the parked home position at the end of
each lab session to avoid long term strain on the joint drive transmissions.
vii) There is a second home position, 0, defined automatically in the controller memory
during the homing routine. We refer to this home position as the active home position.
To see where this home position is use the teach pendant to move to the active home
position
Press: Go position
Press: 0
Press: Enter
or using the command line in ATS
MOVE 0
Return the robot to the parked home position 01 you defined earlier.
viii) There is a third home position termed the reference home position. The reference
home position is such that all axis are aligned in a horizontal plane including the gripper or tool reference. The encoder counts for each axis for the reference home position
are specified by encoder values stored in parameter registers 52-56, see Table 1 for the
values. Define a point for this home position. For robot B, the encoder values are 0,
10500, 8500, 266, 1225 for the 5 axes. To define a point with these encoder values use
DEFP to create a data point and SETPV to specify the data values. That is type
DEFP home
SETPV home
[1] - 0
[2] - 10500
[3] - 8500
[4] - 266
[5] - 1225
Now you can move the robot to the reference home position using
MOVE home
The forward and inverse kinematics of the robot should be computed with respect to
the reference home position.

Downloading and running a program:

i) Activate and home the robot. Leave the robot in the parked home position.

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Scorbot Information.

ii) Sticky tape a piece of paper on the worktable with its centre approximately 500mm
from the base axis of the robot.
iii) Put a felt pen in the pen holder. (You may want to move the robot to the active home
position to make this easier.) Only use the Pilot felt tip pens that are available from
the departmental administrators (or identical pens that you buy yourself.) Remove
the pen after the experiment.
iv) Ensure that you have saved the drawS.dnl file and either the SdatA.dnl file, if you
are working on robot A, or the SdatB.dnl file, if you are working on robot B, into
the ATS directory on the computer. These data files are plain ascii text files and can
be edited with any ascii text editor.
Data names for ACL files can be at most 8 ascii letters long before the .dnl
tag. Dont use control characters like underlines or hyphens in file names.
Also beware of Microsoft helpfully adding and then hiding .txt, .rtf or
.doc tags on file names when you edit them.
Have a look at the two files.
The data file SdatA.dnl first defines a new vector of trajectory points PTW with 104
points using the command
DIMP PTW[104]
Then it individually assigns joint coordinates to each point in the vector PTW using the
command
SETPV PTW[1]
3832 ; Axis 1
6812 ; Axis 2
-6861 ; Axis 3
-13213 ; Axis 4
0 ; Axis 5
The semi-colon ; indicates a remark and text after a semi-colon (on the same line) is
not parsed by the controller unit. Joint axis references are given in encoder counts.
The program file drawS.dnl defines the program drawS. The initial command
PROGRAM drawS
defines the program. The second line
MOVE PTW[1]
moves the robot to the initial point of the trajectory using the standard move command. This is done to avoid an initial fast transient that will cause the end-effector
to bounce into the table. The motion command
MPROFILE PARABOLE A
is used to select a parabolic velocity profile for the motion. And finally the trajectory
itself is tracked using
MOVES PTW 2 104 1000
moving along the vector variable PTW from element 2 to element 104 in 1000 tenths of
seconds (or 10 seconds). The program is terminated with the command
END
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Scorbot Information.

The controller time slice is 10ms. Durations are specified in clock ticks so
a duration of 1000 in the MOVES command corresponds to 10s.
v) Download the data file onto the robot controller.
Make sure that you have exited ATS (shift-F9) and are in the DOS terminal.
type DOWNLOAD /R /Y SdatA.dnl
It will take a minute or so for the points to download due to the slow serial link. There
may be an initial error message due to the DIMP command if the variable PTW is already
defined in the controller memory.
Download the program file
type DOWNLOAD /R /Y drawS.dnl
You must run ATS at least once before you run the download routine to
establish the serial link with the controller unit.
If you dont see any output on the terminal screen during a download then there has
almost certainly been an error. The error report is not shown on screen, however, it
can been found in the REPORT.DLD file in the ATS directory after a failed download.
If the program or data that you are downloading already exists in the controller RAM
you will get a visible error message when downloading. This is OK as the programs
should be overwritten if you use the /r /y modifiers with the download command.
However, you may want to delete the program using the REMOVE <prog> command
and the data using the DELP <pvect> command within ATS prior to downloading
a modified program and data just to make sure the controller is running the latest
version.
Only those data points that you specify are rewritten in a data download.
If you have a vector of point references PTW stored on the machine with
50 points, and then define a shorter path with only 40 points and download
to the same name,s the controller will retain the original vector values for
points 41-50.
vi) Run ATS by typing ATS.
vii) Turn the controller on by typing CON.
viii) Has the main control unit of the robot been turned off? Was the previous motion of
the robot aborted? If you are in any doubt as to whether the robot is properly homed
then home the robot again.
ix) Move the robot down until the pen tip is only a centimetre or two off the centre of the
paper. This is done to avoid an initial fast move from home to the paper that might
lead to the end effector bouncing into the paper. Use the Teach-pendant to move the
robot axis.
x) List programs in the controller unit using
DIR
to verify that program drawS has been loaded.

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Scorbot Information.

xi) Run program drawS by typing

RUN drawS
xii) Move the robot back to its home position using the MOVE 01 command.

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Scorbot Information.

Parameters of Esched Scorbot-ERVII.

A parameter can be viewed by using the ACL command SHOW PAR. For example to check
the value of parameter 33 type:
SHOW PAR 33

Do not modify the controller parameters without asking the lecturer or lab
technician.
The present parameter settings are shown in Table 1. Note that the encoder reference
for the home position for robot A and robot B are different.

Additional Documentation

In addition to this tutorial, there are four manuals that cover all aspects of operation of the
Scorbot:
Scorbot-ER VII User Manual: The User manual contains hardware and software specifications for the robot and controller systems. It contains a tutorial on operating the
robot and on programming in ACL. In Appendix A it describes the joint controller
design.
ACL reference guide: This manual contains comprehensive lists of ACL commands.
ATS reference guide: This manual contains an overview of the operation of the Advanced
terminal software (terminal emulation software).
ATS-offline reference guide: This manual contains an overview of the operation of the
offline capability of the ATS software. It is recommended that you use the command
line version of the ATS software and this manual is unlikely to be of use.

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param.
PAR 33
PAR 34
PAR 35
PAR 36
PAR 37
PAR 52
PAR 53
PAR 54
PAR 55
PAR 56
PAR 92
PAR 93
PAR 94
PAR 95
PAR 96
PAR 97

Scorbot Information.

explanation
Number of encoder counts for +90 rotation
Number of encoder counts for +90 rotation
Number of encoder counts for +90 rotation
Number of encoder counts for +90 rotation
Number of encoder counts for +90 rotation
Value of encoder 1 at home position
Value of encoder 2 at home position
Value of encoder 3 at home position
Value of encoder 4 at home position
Value of encoder 5 at home position

of
of
of
of
of

axis
axis
axis
axis
axis

1
2
3
4
5

Y -coordinate in tenths of millimetres (offset from center along the Y -axis) of

the gripper tip when robot is in the home position.
X-coordinate in tenths of millimetres of the rotation axis of arm link 2 when
the robot is in the home position.
Z-coordinate in tenths of millimetres of the rotation axis of arm link 2.
Length of the (upper) arm link from the first articulated joint in tenths of
millimetres.
Length of the (lower) arm link from the second articulated joint in tenths of
millimetres.
Distance from the pitch axis to the tip of the gripper in tenths of millimetres.

Table 1: Parameter codes for the Denavit-Hartenburg parameters and encoder settings for
the Scorbot ER-VII.

A
23040
-23040
23040
28800
9600
0
11130
8380
682
7658

B
23040
-23040
23040
28800
9600
0
10500
8500
266
1225

-353

-353

500

500

3585

3585

3000

3000

2500

2500

2928

2880