Evaluation of external control of KUKA Industrial Robots for laboratory and prototype environments

To conduct research projects in production science KUKA industrial robots are commonly used. For experimental applications, robot programs need to be adjusted very frequently, which requires a quick and automated way to transfer programs created offline in simulation tools. External control via programmable logic controller is not practical for research applications due to limited freedom to operate, necessary know-how and additional hardware. Answering the question on how to automate a KUKA externally can be challenging if experience in this topic is missing. This article gives a guideline to the three main interfaces: Ethernet-KRL-Interface, Robot Sensor Interface and KUKA Variable Proxyserver. Short descriptions on how to set each one up are given and experiences collected during this process are shared. Application examples using each interface are included. In the end recommendations are given depending on key criteria such as implementation effort, interface restrictions, real-time-capability and cyclic data exchange.