Tele-operating a Collaborative Robot for Space Repairs with Virtual Reality

Abstract

The research's objective is to create a technology for tele-operating an industrial collaborative robot to perform maintenance or repair tasks on its own or to cooperate in space with a person. Thus, a device can be repaired with a comparatively inexpensive and intuitive way by teleoperating a robot. We developed a system, called RemoBot, which can control an ABB Yumi collaborative robotic arm (IRB14000) using a virtual reality (VR) device, namely, the HTC VIVE. The system allows a user to control the robot's motion by moving arm while holding the Vive controller. Vive controller, as a human input device, senses the human hand movement and sends to the tele-operating program. The robot motion from Yumi robotic arm were recorded and analyzed for the system performance.