Robot Programming Simulator Online: A Free Teach Pendant Lab

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Learn to teach a robot arm without a robot

Industrial robots are taught with a handheld device called a teach pendant. You use it to move the arm, set its positions and run its programs. Most learners never get near a real one. The free Robotics lab gives you a pendant and a robot cell in 3D, in your browser, so you can learn the basics of a robot programming simulator before you meet the hardware.

The video above shows the first steps. Here they are in order.

Look around the cell first

The lab opens on a 3D robot cell, and a tour labels every part so you know what you are looking at: the robot, its feeder, the conveyor, the camera, the light curtain and the fixture. Knowing the layout comes first, because a robot program only makes sense if you know what the arm is working with.

Step 1: pick up the pendant

You pick up the pendant. On a real cell, the pendant is the safe way to be near a robot, because it carries the controls you need and the stop button that you hold. The lab keeps that idea.

Step 2: choose the mode

Next you choose the mode. Robots have different modes for different work, such as moving by hand while you teach and running a program automatically. Choosing the right mode before you start is a basic habit that real cells expect.

Step 3: enable the drives

Before the arm will move, you have to enable it. This is a deliberate step, not an accident, so that a robot never moves because someone brushed a button.

Step 4: jog the arm

Now you jog the arm. Jogging means moving it a little at a time with the pendant, to a position you want to record. This is how real positions are taught, and it is the skill that everything else is built on, including a pick and place job.

From jogging to a pick and place job

Once you can jog, the lab takes you on to programming a pick and place job in the same 3D cell. You move the arm to a pick position, then to a place position, and the program ties those moves together.

Who it helps

Students, technicians and programmers who want to understand robot basics can all use it. It will not replace the training for a specific robot brand or the safety rules of a real cell, but it gets the vocabulary and the routine into your head.

Open the Robotics lab and pick up the pendant. It is free to try.

See what other learners have finished on the learner wins page.