Monitoring companion for industrial robotic processes

For system integrators, optimizing complex industrial robotic applications (e.g. robotised welding) is a difficult and time-consuming task. This procedure is rendered tedious and often very hard to achieve when the operator cannot access the robotic system once in operation, perhaps because the installation is far away or because of the operational environment. In these circumstances, as an alternative to physically visiting the installation site, the system integrator may rely on additional nearby sensors to remotely acquire the necessary process information. While it is hard to completely replace this trial and error approach, it is possible to provide a way to gather process information more effectively that can be used in several robotic installations.This thesis investigates the use of a "monitoring robot" in addition to the task robot(s) that belong to the industrial process to be optimized. The monitoring robot can be equipped with several different sensors and can be moved into close proximity of any installed task robot so that it can be used to collect information from that process during and/or after the operation without interfering. The thesis reviews related work in the industry and in the field of teleoperation to identify the most important challenges in remote monitoring and teleoperation. From the background investigation it is clear that two very important issues are: i) the nature of the teleoperator’s interface and; ii) the efficiency of the shared control between the human operator and the monitoring system. In order to investigate these two issues efficiently it was necessary to create experimental scenarios that operate independently from any application scenario, so an abstract problem domain is created. This way the monitoring system's control and interface can be evaluated in a context that presents challenges that are typical of a remote monitoring task but are not application domain specific. Therefore the validity of the proposed approach can be assessed from a generic and, therefore, more powerful and widely applicable perspective. The monitoring framework developed in this thesis is described, both in the shared control design choices based on virtual fixtures (VF) and the implementation in a 3D visualization environment. The monitoring system developed is evaluated with a usability study with user participants. The usability study aims at assessing the system's performance along with its acceptance and ease of use in a static monitoring task, accompanied by user\hyp{}filled TLX questionnaires. Since future work will apply this system in real robotic welding scenarios, this thesis finally reports some preliminary work in such an application

Biting machine, a performance art experiment in human-robot interaction.

The author is a performance and visual artist whose interest lies in the co-evolution of humans and machines, a subject he explores with self-made machines. The paper describes the aims, method, and context of Biting Machine, a performance art experiment in human-robot interaction loosely based on Joseph Beuys' I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) where the artist shared a space for several days with a wild coyote. Biting Machine will be delivered as series of durational performances for an autonomous mobile robot and a human, where the robot will take the role occupied by the coyote in Beuys? piece

Augmented Reality and Robotics: A Survey and Taxonomy for AR-enhanced Human-Robot Interaction and Robotic Interfaces

This paper contributes to a taxonomy of augmented reality and robotics based on a survey of 460 research papers. Augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR) have emerged as a new way to enhance human-robot interaction (HRI) and robotic interfaces (e.g., actuated and shape-changing interfaces). Recently, an increasing number of studies in HCI, HRI, and robotics have demonstrated how AR enables better interactions between people and robots. However, often research remains focused on individual explorations and key design strategies, and research questions are rarely analyzed systematically. In this paper, we synthesize and categorize this research field in the following dimensions: 1) approaches to augmenting reality; 2) characteristics of robots; 3) purposes and benefits; 4) classification of presented information; 5) design components and strategies for visual augmentation; 6) interaction techniques and modalities; 7) application domains; and 8) evaluation strategies. We formulate key challenges and opportunities to guide and inform future research in AR and robotics

Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Α Behavior Trees-based architecture towards operation planning in hybrid manufacturing

In modern manufacturing, the capability of process scheduling and task allocation is a major feature for the proper organization of complex production schedules. More particularly, the case of human-robot collaboration within assembly lines is considered as a quite challenging field, where an efficient process scheduling can reduce products’ delivery times, increasing in parallel its quality. The purpose of this paper is to propose an approach focusing on operation planning for Human-Robot Collaborative processes that consist of many tasks and multiple resources, such as the assembly of large-scale parts. The implementation of the Human-Robot Operation Planning (HROP) module is presented, which aim at the allocation of multiple operations between multiple and different types of resources. This development’s main pillar is a dynamic decision-making logic that combines both constraints, that exclude resources from the evaluation, as well as mathematical criteria, that provide finally a specific solution. The HROP particularity is that it is developed under the Behavior Trees (BT) architecture. For the validation of the proposed approach, a case study under a real industrial environment of the automotive industry is presented, based on the assembly of large-scale parts, such as buses, in a hybrid cell of both human operators and multi-type robots

Designing kinetic objects for digital information display

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1998.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53).Andrew Martin Dahley.M.S

Factories of the Future

Engineering; Industrial engineering; Production engineerin

Digital twin-driven smart manufacturing: Connotation, reference model, applications and research issues

This paper reviews the recent development of Digital Twin technologies in manufacturing systems and processes, to analyze the connotation, application scenarios, and research issues of Digital Twin-driven smart manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0. To understand Digital Twin and its future potential in manufacturing, we summarized the definition and state-of-the-art development outcomes of Digital Twin. Existing technologies for developing a Digital Twin for smart manufacturing are reviewed under a Digital Twin reference model to systematize the development methodology for Digital Twin. Representative applications are reviewed with a focus on the alignment with the proposed reference model. Outstanding research issues of developing Digital Twins for smart manufacturing are identified at the end of the paper

Annals of Scientific Society for Assembly, Handling and Industrial Robotics 2021

This Open Access proceedings presents a good overview of the current research landscape of assembly, handling and industrial robotics. The objective of MHI Colloquium is the successful networking at both academic and management level. Thereby, the colloquium focuses an academic exchange at a high level in order to distribute the obtained research results, to determine synergy effects and trends, to connect the actors in person and in conclusion, to strengthen the research field as well as the MHI community. In addition, there is the possibility to become acquatined with the organizing institute. Primary audience is formed by members of the scientific society for assembly, handling and industrial robotics (WGMHI)