Towards programming robots by gestures, test-case: programming bore inspection for small lotsizes

Rapid programming of applications with down-times near zero is a key to automation of small lotsize production. This paper proposes an approach to program by gestures. It combines the visual observation and interpretation of human activities and gestures, mapping to technical tasks and autonomous execution. Automated planning/generation of the robot motion combined with automated correction of pose deviations (induced from the visual observation) allows an execution which is independent of the observation accuracy. The industrial application: bores and internal threads play a critical role as integral parts of connections, bearings, engines, hydraulic and pneumatic systems. The increased industrial requirement for high quality components demands 100% surface inspection of bores (here with diameters from 4 to 50 mm) at small lotsizes. Since state-of-the-art automation is limited to high volumes, the main target is to develop a semi-autonomous system for rapid and flexible inspection featuring new programming. The main focus is on rapid and intuitive programming of robotic systems. The paper describes the implementation and techniques in case of a bore inspection system