Development of a robot simulator using a modified trajectory generation algorithm oriented towards the palletizing task

Palletizing tasks are necessary to promote the efficient storage and shipping of boxed products. These tasks, however, involve some of the most monotonous and physically demanding tasks in the factory. Thus, many types of robot palletizing systems have been developed, although many robot motion commands still depend on the teach pendant. That is, the operator inputs the motion command lines one by one. This is very troublesome and, most importantly, the user must know how to type the code. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a combination of an optimized pallet pattern generation algorithm, an industrial robot simulator, and a modified trajectory optimization algorithm. To integrate these modules and to define the position of the boxes, the robot and its peripherals, as well as the system layout and its coordinates, were defined. Finally, the proposed path generation algorithm, the ‘overlap method’, was tested in the designed offline programming S/W, and its computational efficiency was proven.