Warning

You are reading the documentation for an older Pickit release (3.3). Documentation for the latest release (3.4) can be found here.

Yaskawa calibration program

This example program requires that Pickit is installed and set up with your robot. For installation instructions, please refer to the Yaskawa installation and setup article.

Before following these Yaskawa specific instructions in this article, make sure you first understand the process of executing a robot-camera calibration as explained on Calibration.

Note

If you want to perform perform robot-camera calibration infrequently, you don’t need to write a calibration robot program. You can teach the calibration poses manually using the robot pendant and the Collect current pose button of the calibration wizard.

If, on the other hand, you expect to run calibration multiple times, an automated calibration program makes sense. You can run it whenever the camera has moved with respect to its fixture. This is the case when you’re setting up your application and the camera location is not yet fully decided. It can also be the result of calibration validation detecting an unexpected change.

Example program: TEST_CALIB

This example program can be found in JOB → SELECT JOB.

NOP
MFRAME UF#(5) P008 BF
MOVJ C00000 VJ=10.00 PL=0
TIMER T=0.50
PI_CALIB
MOVJ C00001 VJ=10.00 PL=0
TIMER T=0.50
PI_CALIB
...
MOVJ C00009 VJ=10.00 PL=0
PI_CALIB
TIMER T=0.50
END

Below, each step of the program is explained.

Define the tool for picking

When using Pickit it is important that tool0 is set equal to the robot flange. This is done by setting all the values of tool0 to 0.

Set user frame

To help us set the user frame we are going to use a Position variable, by default P008. Set following values in VARIABLE → POSITION(ROBOT):

  • Select BASE.

  • Make sure that X, Y, Z, Rx, Ry and Rz are all equal to 0.

Here it is assumed that P008 is not yet being used anywhere else in the robot program. You can also use any other variable, as long as it is free. In that case, make sure to fill this variable in, in the command MFRAME UF#(5) P008 BF.

After running the program, a new user frame (5) will be created that will be used both for calibration and picking.

Teach calibration poses

The calibration program requires ten poses to be defined. For more information on how to define these poses, see the article on Multi poses calibration.

Execute the calibration program

Before running the calibration program, you can optionally activate the Calibration page in the Pickit web interface, which provides feedback on calibration plate visibility and progress of the calibration process (more).

To run the program either do Play + Start, Interlock + FWD or Interlock + Test.