Programming an Industrial Robot by Demonstration

Abstract

The constant need for reducing production costs and faster arrival tothe market of new products requires changes in product design,material selection, and production processes.While applying the changes, a level of complexity of contemporary industrial systems is undoubtedly increasing.Despite the fact that industrial robotic systems are becoming more and more complex, they should become user-friendlier and easily accessible for human operators at the same time.Such systems should have a smaller number of welltrained and highly educated employees who manage the production.This paper present an approach in programming a robot for doing assembly tasks based on Programming by Demonstration principles.The system tracks gestures and movements of the human operator by using Microsoft Kinect sensor.To enable an interaction between the system and the human operator,a simple gesture command list is developed.This methodology could help non-expert users to teach robots how to perform new assembly tasks in more human like ways.The command list present a very first step in a development of more powerfulgesture language that should provide a simple and an intuitive way forexchaniging information between people and machines.