RoboCAD INFELT STEP , Interoperable Platform to Manage Collaboration among CAD and Robot Programming Agents Integrated Based on STEP ( ISO 10303 ) Standard

Today's industries that use robots need solutions, which enable them to program, control and supervise their robots more efficiently. Many solutions introduce robot-programming environments. These environments facilitate the robot programming. These facilities are the results of applications and infrastructures that exchange the programming data between robots’ processors and robot programming applications. Some of these solutions try to use the CAD data for robot programming. In this article, the solutions that facilitate the robot movement programming by analyzing the CAD data are studied. Finally, an integrated platform named RoboCAD INFELT STEP is introduced. This platform is an extension to INFELT STEP platform. INFELT STEP platform is an interoperable and collaborative platform for CAD/CAPP/CAM applications. This platform manages the collaboration among different CAD application in product development processes. INFELT supports the different CAD applications with their data structures while integrating the product data based on ISO 10303 (STEP) standard. The RoboCAD INFELT enables the product designers to program the robots movement for a product process plan by means of that product CAD data. RoboCAD INFELT consists of layers. These layers exchange the programming data between robot processors, robot applications and CAD applications. The RoboCAD INFELT integrates the programming data based on STEP standard while supporting the data structures related to robot application.