A system for controlling an industrial robot, which is simplified in operation and capable of direct-teaching safely all the time. The system is provided with means (131 and 132) for monitoring a magnitude of an external force applied to the forward end of a hand during direct teaching, so that the motion of the robot can be forcibly restricted when the external force reaches a predetermined value of thereabove. Furthermore, when the system is operated to be set in a direct teach mode, a process (136) of correcting the offset of a force sensor is performed automatically. By monitoring a force detected by the force sensor, the discrimination is made as to whether an external force to operate the robot at an abnormal speed is applied to the robot or not, and, when the external force becomes higher than a reference value, a mode of prohibiting the operation of the robot by the external force (position control mode) is set, or current supplied to a servo motor is cut off to prevent the robot from going into the erroneous operation due to an erroneous control.