Programmable controller for industrial robots

Claim 1

A programmable controller for a factory cell including a robot having a robot controller controlling the movements of the robot, said programmable controller comprising: program input means via which a program describing a series of operations of said robot is inputted, wherein the program comprises: robot operation defining instructions defining operations of the robot, and instructions other than the robot operation defining instructions; memory means, connected to said program input means, for storing the program inputted via the program input means; discrimination means, coupled to said memory means, for discriminating the robot operation defining instructions from the other instructions of the program stored and read out from the memory means; information generation means, coupled to the discrimination means, for generating robot operation information in accordance with the robot operation defining instructions discriminated by said discrimination means; first communication means, coupled to said information generation means, for transmitting to said robot controller of the robot the robot operation information generated by the information generation means; second communication means, coupled to the robot controller, for receiving information relative to a state of the robot operation from the robot controller; and instruction execution means, coupled to said discrimination means and said second communication means, for executing the instructions other than the robot operation defining instructions in parallel with the operation state information transmitted from the robot controller via the second communication means.