Direct off-line robot programming via a common CAD package

•A novel CAD-based off-line robot programming solution.•Robot programs are automatically generated from a CAD drawing.•Robot cell design and robot programming are embedded in the same interface.•The system is intuitive to use and presents a short learning curve.

This paper focuses on intuitive and direct off-line robot programming from a CAD drawing running on a common 3-D CAD package. It explores the most suitable way to represent robot motion in a CAD drawing, how to automatically extract such motion data from the drawing, make the mapping of data from the virtual (CAD model) to the real environment and the process of automatic generation of robot paths/programs. In summary, this study aims to present a novel CAD-based robot programming system accessible to anyone with basic knowledge of CAD and robotics. Experiments on different manipulation tasks show the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed approach.