Using Filters to Locate Robots

Because the robot library delivers hundreds of robots from several different manufacturers, browsing through this long list of robots could be a tedious task.  To minimize the tedium, use filtering. 
This procedure describes how to locate and display only those robots in a library which support the features that the user specifies.
Once the expression has been processed for all of the robots in the current chapter, the browser will display only those robots which meet the criteria specified. 
This procedure has two parts:

 

To use the catalogs, you must have access to a library.  Possible sources of libraries include:
  • the Standard Robot Library product (which is an add-on to this product's configurations)
  • another custom-developed robot library
  • a device library.

Accessing the Filter Feature

 
  1. Click Open Catalog.

    The Catalog Browser appears.  The Filter box, which is part of the Catalog Browser, is shown below.
  2. Take one of the following actions:

    • Enter a text string, per the instructions below, and click Enter, OR:
    • Click on the Search button.
    The Filter dialog box appears.
  3. Select the keyword on which you wish to search.

  4. From the lists, select the operators of the search.

    • Blank means no search
    • Two equal signs means to search for the exact string
    • An asterisk followed by an equal sign means search for all robots with a portion of the string.
  5. Enter the search string in the text field;  click either the Apply or OK button.

    The image above illustrates using the filter box to list only those robots in the catalog that define Arc Welding as the primary function of the device; the image below shows the output of that search.

Creating Filter Expressions

To create filter expressions, you must use the keywords (described in the table below) to create logical expressions. 
These logical expressions utilize the V5 Knowledgeware syntax, and are used to determine whether each device meets a particular condition. More specifically, each robot in the current chapter is queried to see if its value for the specified keyword satisfies the condition of the expression. If the condition is true for the current robot, that robot will be displayed in the resulting list. If it is false, the robot will not be displayed.  

Keywords

Expressions are created by first determining which keyword(s) to search against. The available keywords are:
Keyword Meaning 
Name This parameter specifies the manufacturer and model number of the robot.
Model ID This parameter defines the model identification of a particular robot. The model ID is used in conjunction with the controller type to determine variation in motion planning and translator computations such as the ABB handpos. This parameter is displayed only for certain controller types.

Application

This parameter defines the robot's application. "Generic" should be specified to use the default application. This parameter is used to determine what types of application specific data may be stored with a device.
Controller This parameter defines the robot's controller type. "Unknown" should be specified to use the default system controller type. This parameter is used to determine proper motion planning and controls the coordinates used to display the TCP position of the robot.
DOF An integer representing the degrees of freedom that the robot supports.

Expression syntax

To use a keyword in a filter expression, first prepend "x." (the letter x and a period) to the keyword name and surround the keyword name with quotation marks. This modified keyword name can then be used with arithmetic operators (+, -, *, /), relational operators (<, <=, >=, >, ==), and logical operators (AND, OR) to create an expression that can be used to filter out devices which are not of interest. 
Here are a few simple and common expressions that might typically be used:
 
  • x."Application" == "Arc Welding"
     This expression lists each robot that has Arc Welding defined as its primary application.
  • x."DOF" >= 4
     This expression lists all robots that support four or more degrees of freedom.
     
  • x."Controller" == "FANUC RJ"
     This expression lists all robots that have FANUC RJ defined as their controller.
Remember to quote string values.

Note that some keywords are string-based (such as Application and Controller), while others define a numeric value (DOF). It is important that expressions which test for equality (==) against the value of a string-based keyword always have the right side of the expression enclosed in double-quotes, as shown in the first and third examples above.