A centralized tele-teaching system for industrial robots using virtual reality

Instead of teaching the robot at the work-site, a novel approach and framework for industrial robots teaching is presented to improve the safety and efficiency of the task. Centralized tele-teaching is the primary concept to achieve such goal. By using sensor and virtual reality (VR) techniques, the static global task information and the dynamic position and orientation local information on tool and workpiece during the teaching are integrated to the virtual environment (VE) where human operator can remotely monitor and intervene in the teaching process by means of an interactive device. To illustrate this, a prototype system for welding task teaching of industrial robot is developed. Preliminary results with the prototype system demonstrate the utility of the approach and framework.