Shop floor based programming of assembly assistants for industrial pick and place applications
Flexible robot assistants allow reducing the costs of acquisition for the automation of small lot sizes in industrial assembly. To additionally decrease the cost for initial start up and to reach profitability, new concepts for programming these systems are needed. This work describes an approach for a human machine interface that enables operators without expert knowledge to commission complex assembly applications in a short time. The user is efficiently led through the whole process by intuitive operator guidance. To reach the requirements of industrial pick and place tasks, a concept for moving the robot by specialized jog controls is presented that allows a fast and user friendly teaching with high precision. Furthermore, an intuitive approach for selection and parameterization of complex object detection sequences is described. Usability tests with machine setters showed that the human machine interface meets industrial needs without requiring expert knowledge and the time for commissioning can be shortened to a few hours.
2012 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems