Many industrial tasks-such as sanding, installing fasteners, and wire
harnessing-are difficult to automate due to task complexity and variability. We
instead investigate deploying robots in an assistive role for these tasks,
where the robot assumes the physical task burden and the skilled worker
provides both the high-level task planning and low-level feedback necessary to
effectively complete the task. In this article, we describe the development of
a system for flexible human-robot teaming that combines state-of-the-art
methods in end-user programming and shared autonomy and its implementation in
sanding applications. We demonstrate the use of the system in two types of
sanding tasks, situated in aircraft manufacturing, that highlight two potential
workflows within the human-robot teaming setup. We conclude by discussing
challenges and opportunities in human-robot teaming identified during the
development, application, and demonstration of our system.Comment: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on
Human-Robot Interaction (HRI '24), March 11 - 14, 2024, Boulder, CO, US
