Abstract
As the need of mass production decrease, traditional machinery are being replaced by intellectualized flexible manufactured machine tools. Practically, robot path planning are done via programming by demonstration, PbD. Human operators guide the robot through teach-pendant, then the robot finish the task by repeating the demonstration. Unfortunately, it is a very time‐consuming and complex process, usually required certain level of expertise. In this research, we proposed a highly interactive human machine interface, HMI, through augmented reality, AR, to promote the efficiency and intuition during the planning process. This system is implemented in two different flexible manufactured machine tools to verify the concept and present the result works. One is a 5-DOF haptic device to mimic the movement of a 5-axis robot arm, another is an open loop control multi-axis dispenser machine. Users plan the path over a virtual workpiece by a color-marked probe, guidance information is presented on the virtual model to avoid collisions, virtual-real interaction is also provided based on user’s behavior during the procedure to upgrade the spatial perception of users. First, multiple coordinate frames are integrated, i.e., RGBD camera, virtual workpiece and the manufactured machine tools. Then a RGBD cam is applied to continuously gather geometry information of the real world and track the colored target. Finally, trajectory of the colored target is captured and recorded. In this research, we revel the ability and value of AR-based HMI in robot path planning. Meanwhile open a new chapter in innovative application of augmented reality in industry and human machine interface technology.