Master Class II - Plug & Play a KUKA robot

Instructors: Sigrid Brell-Cokcan, Johannes Braumann

Category: Parametric Robot Control with Grasshopper / Programming

Prerequisites: Familiarity with Rhino 4.0 and Grasshopper, no programming or scripting skills required.

Intended for: Students, graduate students, researchers, professionals

This workshop will demonstrate the optimization of the robot data workflow from a digital parametric design to a physical geometry. In Grasshopper, the robot's end effector visualization, the generation of manufacturing and design variants for mass customization, and the necessary calculations for direct robot programming will be performed in real time providing instant design feedback. As a result of the parametric design process the KRL (KUKA Robot Language) code will be automatically generated. A KUKA robot will be used for physically producing the participants ́ parametric designs. The custom KUKA Plug In for Grasshopper/Rhino will be made available to all participants.

Participants will be introduced to the concepts of production immanent design, manufacturing parametric designs, writing G-Code for CNC machining and controlling a KUKA robot using customized parametric design software (Grasshopper). Participants are strongly encouraged to produce their own individual designs within the 2-days ́ workshop: Using robot wire-cutting or CNC robot milling, a XPS stockmodel will be cut into stackable components resulting in a free form design.

Day 1: Demonstration of the CAD to Robot workflow. Generating general G-Codes for CNC-Machines. First implementations in Grasshopper (Analyzing the existing design from the robot demonstration, required geometric input, G-Code output for Grasshopper). Hand Out Task 1: Custom parametric freeform design.

Day 2: Individual support for task 1 (parametric design in Grasshopper). Task 2: Robot simulation of task 1 Robot manufacturing of individual designs.