An industrial robotics course based on a graphical simulation package

In recent years there has been an increasing introduction of industrial robots in the manufacturing industry, with several studies that predict the increased dissemination of robots in industrial and service sectors. On the other hand, there is often the lack of people able to plan the introduction of these equipments in manufacturing environments and to operate it after its inception. This leads to the need to train undergraduates in the operation and programming of industrial robots. Due to the Portuguese economic situation, there is a lack of funding for the higher schools, leading to the need of finding innovative ways to teach these subjects. Bearing in mind these ideas, in this paper is described a course on industrial robotics, which is based in the achievement of the practical training using commercial off-the-shelf robot simulation software for off-line programming.