The Design and Evaluation of an Ergonomic Contactless Gesture Control System for Industrial Robots

Gilbert Tang,Phil Webb

doi:10.1155/2018/9791286

Abstract

In industrial human-robot collaboration, variability commonly exists in the operation environment and the components, which induces uncertainty and error that require frequent manual intervention for rectification. Conventional teach pendants can be physically demanding to use and require user training prior to operation. Thus, a more effective control interface is required. In this paper, the design and evaluation of a contactless gesture control system using Leap Motion is described. The design process involves the use of RULA human factor analysis tool. Separately, an exploratory usability test was conducted to compare three usability aspects between the developed gesture control system and an off-the-shelf conventional touchscreen teach pendant. This paper focuses on the user-centred design methodology of the gesture control system. The novelties of this research are the use of human factor analysis tools in the human-centred development process, as well as the gesture control design that enable users to control industrial robot’s motion by its joints and tool centre point position. The system has potential to use as an input device for industrial robot control in a human-robot collaboration scene. The developed gesture control system was targeting applications in system recovery and error correction in flexible manufacturing environment shared between humans and robots. The system allows operators to control an industrial robot without the requirement of significant training.

Highlights

Many high-value low-volume manufacturing tasks are labour intensive, and workers are often required to work in poor conditions and uncomfortable positions
The purpose of the developed system described in this paper is to enable users to control robot movements precisely without the use of a teach pendant
The system allows operators to control an industrial robot without the requirement of significant training

Summary

Introduction

Many high-value low-volume manufacturing tasks are labour intensive, and workers are often required to work in poor conditions and uncomfortable positions. Collaborative robots could operate as assistants in shared workspaces to reduce manual handling and improve ergonomic of manual tasks by minimising the requirements for human to work in awkward positions and to lift heavy parts, which improve productivity [2, 3]. Industrial robots are often programmed and controlled using robot teach pendants, which require trained users who have knowledge of the user interface and its proprietary programming languages. These training requirements have negative implications on the overall implementation cost and the complexity of the controls could reduce the seamlessness of the interaction. The investment cost of effective human-machine interfaces could be recovered by savings generated by a more efficient working system which will turn into profit once the cost is broke even [5]

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion