Development of a Voice-Controlled Human-Robot Interface

The goal of this thesis is to develop a voice-controlled human-robot interface (HRI) which allows a person to control and communicate with a robot. Dragon NaturallySpeaking, a commercially available automatic speech recognition engine, was chosen for the development of the proposed HRI. In order to achieve the goal, the Dragon software is used to create custom commands (or macros) which must satisfy the tasks of (a) directly controlling the robot with voice, (b) writing a robot program with voice, and (c) developing a HRI which allows the human and robot to communicate with each other using speech. The key is to generate keystrokes upon recognizing the speech and three types of macro including step-by-step, macro recorder, and advanced scripting. Experiment was conducted in three phases to test the functionality of the developed macros in accomplishing all three tasks. The result showed that advanced scripting macro is the only type of macro that works. It is also the most suitable for the task because it is quick and easy to create and can be used to develop flexible and natural voice command. Since the output of macro is a series of keystrokes, which forms a syntax for the robot program, macros developed by the Dragon software can be used to communicate with virtually any robots by making an adjustment on the output keystroke

CONTROLLING OF AN INDUSTRIAL ROBOTIC ARM

Most of industrial robots are still programmed using the typical teaching process, through the use of the robot teach pendant. In this paper is proposed an accelerometer-based system to control an industrial robot using two low-cost and small 3-axis wireless accelerometers. These accelerometers are attached to the human arms, capturing its behavior (gestures and postures). An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) trained with a back-propagation algorithm was used to recognize arm gestures and postures, which then will be used as input in the control of the robot. The aim is that the robot starts the movement almost at the same time as the user starts to perform a gesture or posture (low response time). The results show that the system allows the control of an industrial robot in an intuitive way. However, the achieved recognition rate of gestures and postures (92%) should be improved in future, keeping the compromise with the system response time (160 milliseconds). Finally, the results of some tests performed with an industrial robot are presented and discussed

Integration of an industrial robot with the systems for image and voice recognition

The paper reports a solution for the integration of the industrial robot ABB IRB140 with the system for automatic speech recognition (ASR) and the system for computer vision. The robot has the task to manipulate the objects placed randomly on a pad lying on a table, and the computer vision system has to recognize their characteristics (shape, dimension, color, position, and orientation). The ASR system has a task to recognize human speech and use it as a command to the robot, so the robot can manipulate the objects. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. III44008: Design of Robots as Assistive Technology for the Treatment of Children with Developmental Disorders i br. TR32035: Development of Dialogue Systems for Serbian and other South Slavic Languages

Automated and Robotized Systems

Abstract Automated and robotized systems are widely used in industry with deployment to perform unsafe, hazardous, highly repetitive and unpleasant tasks for human. Furthermore, industrial robot, unlike human, can perform complex or mundane tasks without tiring, and they can work in hazardous conditions that would pose risks to humans. For example, robots are increasingly being used in industry to perform such tasks as material handling and welding, and there are around one million robots in use worldwide. However, robots can pose hazardous risks to humans if sufficient precautions are not provided. To avoid injury, it is necessary to find a mutual link between the behavior of the robot and possible personal injury. It is usually necessary to ensure that the robot has not exceeded the maximum safe zone, and thus it has not come into contact with man. Safe planning is an important component of the safety strategy. Safety planning and the a priori identification of potentially hazardous situations as a means of reducing potential robot-safety hazards have received less attention than control-based (reactive) techniques. So, it is necessary to manage of risk for humans working near robots involves in general very broad considerations, ranging from potential electrical and pressurized fluid hazards, pinching hands, dropping parts, etc