This free tool lets you sketch a top-down 2D floor plan of an industrial robot work cell — place the robot base, drag in obstacles and fixtures like a conveyor, tote, or machine tool, and drop 2-4 pick/place target points — and instantly see whether each target actually falls inside the robot's reach envelope with a clear line of sight to the base. It's a lightweight planning aid for early-stage cell layout, not a full path-planning or collision-simulation solver.
A typical 6-axis articulated robot cannot reach every point in a disc around its base: very close to the base, the wrist and shoulder joints run out of usable range (the inner "dead zone"), and beyond full arm extension nothing is reachable at all. This tool draws that region as an annulus — a shaded ring between an adjustable minimum and maximum reach radius — around the draggable robot base icon. Adjust the two reach sliders to match a real robot's datasheet horizontal reach specification, or to explore how a smaller vs. larger arm changes what parts of the cell it can service.
Each target point is colored green if it satisfies two conditions: its straight-line distance from the robot base falls within the min/max reach envelope, and the straight line from the base to the target does not pass through any obstacle rectangle. If either condition fails, the point turns red and the target list on the right explains why — out of reach, too close (inside the dead zone), or blocked by an obstacle. This is a simple line-of-sight/annulus check, intended as a fast planning sanity check, not a substitute for verifying actual joint-by-joint reachability and full path clearance in CAD or a robot simulator.
Toggling "Show safeguarded perimeter" draws a dashed ring at the robot's maximum reach plus an adjustable buffer distance, illustrating the general ANSI/RIA R15.06 principle that a safeguarded space (fencing, light curtains, or safety-rated scanners) should stand outside the robot's maximum reach by a protective margin sized for stopping distance and approach speed. This tool's buffer slider is a rough visual planning aid — for an actual minimum protective separation distance calculation for a speed-and-separation-monitoring collaborative robot cell, use the Cobot Safety Distance Calculator in this studio, which applies the ISO/TS 15066 and ISO 13855 formulas directly.
Drag the robot arm icon anywhere on the grid to reposition the cell. Use "+ Conveyor", "+ Tote / Bin", and "+ Machine Tool" to drop in obstacle rectangles sized for common fixtures, then drag them into place. Click "+ Add Target Point" (up to 4) to mark pick/place locations, and drag each one around the grid — the color and the reason shown in the Target Points list update live. Use "Reset Layout" at any time to return to the starter example.
No. It performs a simplified straight-line (line-of-sight) check from the robot base to each target point against the obstacle rectangles, plus a distance check against the reach envelope. A real robot arm sweeps a 3D volume with elbow and wrist links that can collide with fixtures even when the wrist point itself has clear line of sight. Treat a green result here as "worth investigating further," not a guarantee of collision-free motion — validate the final layout in CAD or a robot simulator before building the cell.
Most 6-axis articulated arms cannot fully fold their wrist and forearm links close to the base — mechanical joint limits and self-collision avoidance leave a small unreachable disc directly around the mounting point. The minimum reach slider represents that dead zone; set it to 0 to model a robot type (or a specific reduced-reach task) where it doesn't apply.
Check the robot manufacturer's datasheet for its horizontal reach (maximum reach) specification, typically listed in millimeters — convert to meters for the max reach slider. Manufacturers rarely publish a formal minimum-reach dead-zone figure; a common rough planning estimate is 15-25% of the maximum reach, but confirm against the robot's reachable-workspace diagram if precision matters.
Not in this version — it is intentionally scoped to a quick, uncluttered early-layout sanity check with 2-4 target points and rectangular obstacles/fixtures. For detailed multi-point path planning, cycle-time analysis, or irregular fixture geometry, use full robot simulation software (e.g. RoboDK, Process Simulate, or the manufacturer's own offline programming tool).