MotoLogix: A Revolutionary Software

MotoLogix is a new, rev­o­lu­tion­ary soft­ware and hard­ware inter­face that can con­trol DX200 Motoman robots via a Pro­gram­ma­ble Log­ic Con­troller, or PLC. The inte­gra­tion of MotoLogix into the PLC offers the full advan­tages of the robot con­troller, but pro­vides a more sim­pli­fied process. No longer will pro­gram­ming, oper­a­tion, and main­te­nance of robots and machine con­trol be car­ried out separately.

Until the arrival of MotoLogix, pro­gram­ming, con­trol, and error elim­i­na­tion for the machine and robot had to be car­ried out sep­a­rate­ly. The machine and robot were pro­grammed and oper­at­ed sep­a­rate­ly from one anoth­er via the PLC and the robot con­trol, using a teach pen­dant. Addi­tion­al­ly, the source of fail­ure was dif­fi­cult to dis­cov­er to help elim­i­nate errors quick­ly, and eas­i­ly. This meant that the oper­at­ing per­son­nel had to be trained in inter­na­tion­al PLC stan­dards and acquire spe­cif­ic skills. MotoLogix offers the abil­i­ty to remove the teach pen­dant and any pre­vi­ous robot oper­a­tion knowl­edge from the equation. 

The robot is con­nect­ed and direct­ly embed­ded in the PLC and the Human Machine Inter­face (HMI) via MotoLogix. All data can be saved in the PLC with­out any stor­age lim­its and can be test­ed using vir­tu­al­iza­tion. The HMI can also eas­i­ly graph­i­cal­ly dis­play data, mak­ing it is pos­si­ble to dis­play indi­vid­ual items such as the com­pa­ny logo or appli­ca­tion-spe­cif­ic processes.

Objec­tives: MotoLogix was designed for two main objectives: 

• To enable OEM’s to deeply inte­grate the Motoman robot sys­tems in their PLC con­trolled machinery.
• To pro­vide easy pro­gram­ming, com­mis­sion­ing, teach­ing, and oper­at­ing of the robots, with­out any spe­cial­ized knowledge.

Com­po­nents: There are two com­po­nents to the software:

• MotoLogix Run­time: Enables the MotoLogix inter­face on the DX200 robot con­troller, using the field bus of your choice for com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the PLC. There is no teach pen­dant nor pri­or knowl­edge required.
• MotoLogix PLC Library: Easy to use, com­pre­hen­sive set of func­tion blocks for writ­ing your robot appli­ca­tion log­ic in the PLC. The inter­face has a library of func­tion blocks already pre­pared in all lan­guage options, so oper­at­ing per­son­nel can work direct­ly via the library; Bit sequences for ser­vos are no longer required.

Easy Start-Up:

The path con­trol is main­tained via the robot con­troller DX200, ensur­ing the nor­mal ben­e­fits are retained, in par­tic­u­lar motion pre­ci­sion and speed sta­bil­i­ty. Noth­ing else is required for the ini­tial start-up. The robot and all of its periph­er­al equip­ment (grip­per, sen­sors, etc) is con­troller and oper­at­ed direct­ly via PLC. With MotoLogix, the robot con­trol­ling can occur by means of touch pan­els with an easy visu­al­iza­tion and intu­itive user interface.

Appli­ca­tions:

The pre­cise, high motion qual­i­ty of the robot is main­tained for a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions such as machine load­ing, pick-and-place, pack­ag­ing, pal­letiz­ing, mea­sur­ing, test­ing and sorting. 

Sup­port­ed PLC brands: 

VIPA, Rock­well, B&R, Siemens S7-300, Siemens S7-1500

It is now appar­ent that MotoLogix is the per­fect, flex­i­ble solu­tion for the needs of your indus­try. Sim­ple inte­gra­tion of robot con­trol in the PLC pays off not just when oper­at­ing com­plex pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. With MotoLogix, PLC skills are suf­fi­cient to be able to con­trol robots. This means that search­ing for per­son­nel with robot train­ing or invest­ing in retrain­ing is no longer nec­es­sary; Motoman robots can be oper­at­ed in the same con­di­tions all over the world.

The inter­face tru­ly offers an inno­v­a­tive and high-per­for­mance prod­uct that enables Motoman robots to be pro­grammed quick­ly and con­trolled with stan­dard pro­gram­ming lan­guages. It also helps to increase the effi­cien­cy of the start-up process and offers users an inno­v­a­tive way to con­trol all-axes in a coor­di­nat­ed robot motion.

Con­tact Robots​.com experts to dis­cuss your options for inte­grat­ing MotoLogix into your pro­duc­tion line. Con­tact us online or give us a call at 877−762−6881.