Teach Pendant

示教器TPAdvanced

The handheld control unit for an industrial robot arm, used to jog it, teach positions, and write motion programs.

A teach pendant is a handheld terminal wired to a robot's control cabinet, with a screen, buttons or a touchscreen, an emergency-stop button, and a three-position enabling switch — releasing it or pressing it all the way down both trigger a stop, so only the middle position allows motion. The operator uses it to jog the robot's joints or tool tip to a target position and record that point; stringing several recorded points together builds a program the robot then repeats automatically. This “teach and playback” method is the most traditional way of programming industrial robots from makers like FANUC, ABB, and KUKA. Collaborative arms often replace it with a tablet-style pendant or hand-guided teaching. In embodied-AI research, a teach pendant is mostly used to home the arm, change parameters, and hit emergency stop.

ExampleAn operator jogs the arm to a position above a workpiece using the teach pendant and saves it as a waypoint, then records a few more points to build a pick-and-place sequence.

Also called: TP, Teaching Pendant, Teach Box
Related: Teach-and-Playback Programming · Industrial Robot · Emergency Stop · Robot Controller · Kinesthetic Teaching · Offline Programming
Sources: Teach pendant - Wikipedia