Installation and Commissioning

Multitasking 3.13.3 Multitasking 3.1Up to 10 programs (tasks) can be executed in parallel with the normal robot program.- These additional tasks start automatically at power on and will continue untilthe robot is powered off, i.e. even when the main process has been stopped andin manual mode.- They are programmed using standard RAPID instructions, except for motioninstructions.- They can be programmed to carry out various activities in manual or automaticmode, and depending on whether or not the main process is running.- Communication between tasks is carried out via I/O or global data.- Priorities can be set between the processes.Examples of applications:- The robot is continuously monitoring certain signals even when the robot programhas stopped, thus taking over the job traditionally allocated to a PLC.- An operator dialogue is required at the same time as the robot is doing, forexample, welding. By putting this operator dialogue into a background task, theoperator can specify input data for the next work cycle without having to stopthe robot.- The robot is controlling a piece of external equipment in parallel with the normalprogram execution.PerformanceWhen the various processes are programmed in the correct way, no performanceproblems will normally occur:- When the priorities for the various processes are correctly set, the normal programexecution of the robot will not be affected.- Because monitoring is implemented via interrupts (instead of checking conditionsat regular intervals), processor time is required only when somethingactually happens.- All input and output signals are accessible for each process.Note that the response time of Multitasking does not match that of a PLC. Multitaskingis primary intended for less demanding tasks.The available program memory can be divided up arbitrarily between the processes.However, each process in addition to the main process will reduce the total memory,see section 5.1.Product Specification RobotWare for BaseWare OS 3.1 19