Towards the integration of a pointing-based human-machine interface in an industrial control system compliant with the IEC 61499 standard

Abstract

In the context of Industry 4.0, we tackle the problem of how human operators can interact with a cyber-physical system at run-time. We focus on sporadic interactions where operators, normally occupied with other activities, need to communicate to the system a piece of information relative to a specif part of the plant, such as an anomaly. As a concrete instance of this problem, we consider an automated system composed of a robot loading packages on a conveyor belt that transports and sorts them. We argue that gesture-based interaction modalities offer important advantages for the operators in the considered scenario and can be deployed respecting the IEC 61499 standard.