Manual feeding method for robots

PCT No. PCT/JP93/00787 Sec. 371 Date Feb. 14, 1994 Sec. 102(e) Date Feb. 14, 1994 PCT Filed Jun. 11, 1993 PCT Pub. No. WO93/25356 PCT Pub. Date Dec. 23, 1993.A method of manually feeding robots to ensure an efficient and safe teaching operation for each robot, even when the multiplicity of robots are arranged close to each other. As long as a controller B receives a manual feed command, coordinates representing current positions of feature points Pi and Qj defined on the robots A1 and A2 are sequentially simulated for being updated and stored in the RAM. The distances R between the feature points Pi (i=1 to final value) and feature points Qj (j=1 to final value) are determined sequentially. Each time a smaller distance between the feature points is calculated, the value is updated and stored into the register R min to calculate a shortest distance between the robots A1 and A2. The actual manual feed rate V is increased or decreased in response to the value of the shortest distance R min.