Australian universities teach robotic programming

ABB has put together a 'school package' of robots, which gives the option of an IRB 140, an IRB 1400 or an IRB 2400, along with the six Robot Studio licences.

ABB hopes to enable educational institutions to combine robots with a virtual learning environment. The multiple Robot Studio licences will have a powerful effect on the student's learning environment.

Robot Studio allows students to build up three-dimensional (3D) robotic cells based on the problems presented to them while at the same time building on their own skills in modelling in this 3D environment.

Says Greg Sale, product manager for robotics, "With Robot Studio, groups of students can work within the 'virtual' world of Robot Studio and then load their resulting program directly into the robot and see the real results of their work.

"With Robot Studio the students can easily build up a robot station, verify the layout and create a complete robot program. That is true offline programming at the desktop."

Also included is QuickTeach, which is a graphical representation of an ABB robot teach pendant running on a PC. Almost anything that can be done on the real robot can be done in QuickTeach. This makes QuickTeach an excellent training tool.

"They even end up with an AVI format movie at the end so they can go home and demonstrate their results on a normal PC," says Sale.