An Advanced Human-Robot Interaction Interface for Collaborative Robotic Assembly Tasks

This article introduces an advanced human-robot interaction (HRI) interface that allows teaching new assembly tasks to collaborative robotic systems. Using advanced perception and simulation technologies, the interface provides the proper tools for a non-expert user to teach a robot a new assembly task in a short amount of time. An RGBD camera is used to allow the user to demonstrate the task and the system extracts the needed information for the assembly to be simulated and performed by the robot, while the user guides the process. The HRI interface is integrated with the ROS framework and is built as a web application allowing operation through portable devices, such as a tablet PC. The interface is evaluated with user experience rating from test subjects that are requested to teach a folding assembly task to the robot.