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

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.

Controlling an Industrial Robot Using a Graphic Tablet in Offline and Online Mode

“…One example is the use of gestures. This way of communication is already used today to control TV sets, household appliances (e.g., cleaning robots), transport vehicles (mobile robots—[ 60 ]) and industrial robots [ 61 ]. In solutions related to gesture-based robot control, many researchers use the KINECT sensor [ 51 , 62 , 63 , 64 ].…”

Review of Interfaces for Industrial Human-Robot Interaction

“…Both types of gestures are used to move the robot arm in different directions. Tang & Webb describe a system to control industrial robots using gestures [22]. The focus of their paper is the user-centered development process based on RULA.…”

Usability and user experience evaluation of natural user interfaces: a systematic mapping study

“…The extraction strategy certifies the application of the same data extraction criteria for all papers selected, facilitating the classification. The 56 selected publications are [23–78 ].…”