Automatic layout generation of robotic production cells in a 3D manufacturing simulation environment

Facing an increasing demand for flexible and reconfigurable production lines, the development and implementation of extensive simulation tools for faster planning of robot cells or entire production lines continue to gain importance. Simulation tools offer the opportunity to test robotic applications before the physical existence of the system, to ensure reachability and feasibility of the actual cell implementation and examine compliance with the desired cycle time during process execution. During simulation analysis, extracting data from the given layout and building the corresponding simulation model takes a considerable amount of time. To reduce the required time, one applicable approach is to automate the generation of the simulation model using data from tools used prior to the simulation analysis, such as layout planning tools. So far, data representation limits the straightforward data exchange between planning and simulation tools and constitutes a time-consuming task during simulative ramp up. This paper focuses on the automatic layout generation in a 3D simulation environment. To enable automatic layout generation, a suitable representation of the imported layout data is derived. For this purpose, available data exchange formats are compared and their suitability for automatic model generation is evaluated. As a result of the evaluation, AutomationML is identified to meet the requirements best. Using this format, the development of an interface is described, which makes it possible to import layout data into the simulation environment of Visual Components and automatically generate a simulation-model of the complete robotic cell layout