A new robot command library which includes simulation

A new type of high‐level robot command library is presented, which can be viewed as a marriage between simulation and control. The library commands contain simulations of the physical abilities of the robots as well as having the ability to control the physical machinery. The control of the machinery is performed by translating parameter information and then mapping the library commands to the robot controller commands. To demonstrate the use of the libraries, two robot programming languages have been analysed and new robot command libraries created for two types of machine. The robots selected were a Fanuc A600 and a Unimation PUMA robot. The paper also presents criteria that were used for assessing programming languages for use in programming and controlling robots. The paper shows how simulation can be incorporated into a high‐level robot command library (or object library) and how the command library can be used for the programming of industrial robots. The work has demonstated the advantages of including simulation within robot command libraries. The purpose of the research has not been to define another new robot command library, and the techniques presented here can be applied to other robot languages and high level robot command libraries.