What is the relationship between industrial robots, PLC and automation?

Many people are not clear about the relationship between automation and automation, especially those who are new to this industry. Today, I will give you an introduction to the relationship between the three. Of course, we must first understand the concepts of each of them.

What is Industry?

“ A robot is a device that executes commands.

An industrial robot is a multi-joint hand or multi-degree-of-freedom manipulator. It is a mechanical device that works by its own power and is mostly used in industrial production. An industrial robot can replace the labor of multiple people and work according to the standard workflow established in advance, helping to reduce the relevant defective rate and increase unit output. Since the emergence of industrial robots, the core structure has not changed much. The "visible" part of ordinary people has hardly changed, but the "invisible" part has changed greatly. New materials, new control concepts, new etc. make the current industrial robot no longer just a machine, but a highly integrated device similar to a server. Yes, it is a server, and the server is connected to things such as cameras and laser rangefinders. Industrial robots are generally composed of a mechanical body and. Industrial robots are composed of many to perform actions. In fact, controlling industrial robots is essentially to control the motors to rotate forward, reverse, rotate faster, or rotate more vigorously. I believe you can understand this. Then in order to control these motors to act as you want, you naturally need PLC as a control platform to write programs for you. Industrial robots do not work in isolation. A production line requires the collaboration of multiple industrial robots. The production line also includes other movable parts, such as conveyor belts, AGV self-propelled vehicles, etc. How these roles cooperate with each other also requires PLC coordination.

What is PLC?

" PLC can coordinate and control these devices

PLC (Progmable Controller, PLC), also known as Logic Controller , is a digital operation system with a high application rate in modern industry. PLC contains a variety of human-machine interface units and units, etc., which control the production work of equipment through digital or quantitative input and output. It can be divided into three stages: input sampling, program execution, output refresh, and then re-input sampling, execution and output reciprocating (or cyclic) work.

PLC can be simply understood as a small computer that can do many things. It is difficult to use PLC to control industrial robots. The commonly used instructions of PLC cannot be implemented. If you need to write many things like function libraries to control industrial robots, ordinary electrical programs cannot write them. PLC can meet the technical requirements of industrial robots, but industrial robots cannot achieve the comprehensiveness of PLC. In other words, industrial robots belong to a branch of PLC, and then on this basis, they are refined and made into a development environment specifically for robot automation, which can save a lot of development time and also get some mandatory safety measures. For example, FANUC robot system and its own PLC system.

What is Automation?

“ Automation is composed of multiple such devices and PLCs

Automation is a general term for the measurement, manipulation and process control of machines or production processes according to the expected goals without direct human intervention . The "automation" currently widely used in the German and international manufacturing industries completely embeds machinery or components into the controlled device and is a special computer system designed for a specific application. The concept of automation is a dynamic development process. In the past, people's understanding of automation or the functional goal of automation was to replace human operation with mechanical actions to automatically complete specific tasks. This is essentially the view that automation replaces human physical labor . Later, with the development of electronic and information technology, especially with the emergence and widespread application of computers, the concept of automation has been expanded to use machines (including computers) to replace not only human physical labor but also replace or assist mental labor to automatically complete specific tasks. The broad connotation of automation includes at least the following points: In terms of form, manufacturing automation has three meanings: replacing human physical labor, replacing or assisting human mental labor, and the coordination, management, control and optimization of man-machine and the entire system in the manufacturing system. In terms of function, automation replacing human physical labor or mental labor is only a part of the automation functional goal system. The functional goals of automation are multifaceted and have formed an organic system. In terms of scope, manufacturing automation involves not only specific production processes, but all processes in the life cycle.

Summarize

After reading the introductions of the three, I wonder if you can discover any relationship between them?

That’s right, the most important feature of industrial robots is that they can work “according to pre-set standard work processes”, while PLC is a “digital computing and operating electronic system” that includes “a variety of human-machine interfaces”, and automation includes the two characteristics of “according to expected goals” and “dedicated computer system”.

Therefore, during the process of changing production lines, only the PLC program needs to be changed and the industrial robot needs to be fine-tuned to start a new round of production.

Therefore, learning PLC can help you gain a deeper understanding of the working status of industrial robots and the entire work site. PLC is the only way for engineers to flexibly use and control industrial automation. Otherwise, you can only do simple start and stop work based on what others have set up. Without some PLC basics, even the basic maintenance work level may not be achieved.

Editor: Huang Fei