AR-based interaction for safe human-robot collaborative manufacturing
This work addresses safety and efficiency challenges for operators in industrial manufacturing, though it is incremental as it builds on existing AR and monitoring technologies.
The authors tackled the problem of ensuring safe human-robot collaboration in manufacturing by proposing a depth-sensor model and AR-based interactive UIs, which reduced task completion time by 21-24% and robot idle time by 57-64% compared to a baseline without interaction and workspace sharing.
Industrial standards define safety requirements for Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) in industrial manufacturing. The standards particularly require real-time monitoring and securing of the minimum protective distance between a robot and an operator. In this work, we propose a depth-sensor based model for workspace monitoring and an interactive Augmented Reality (AR) User Interface (UI) for safe HRC. The AR UI is implemented on two different hardware: a projector-mirror setup anda wearable AR gear (HoloLens). We experiment the workspace model and UIs for a realistic diesel motor assembly task. The AR-based interactive UIs provide 21-24% and 57-64% reduction in the task completion and robot idle time, respectively, as compared to a baseline without interaction and workspace sharing. However, subjective evaluations reveal that HoloLens based AR is not yet suitable for industrial manufacturing while the projector-mirror setup shows clear improvements in safety and work ergonomics.