Shop floor based programming of assembly assistants for industrial pick-and-place applications

Flexible robot assistants allow reducing the costs of acquisition for the automation of small lot sizes in industrial assembly. To additionally decrease the cost for initial start-up and to reach profitability, new concepts for programming these systems are needed. This work describes an approach for a human-machine-interface that enables operators without expert knowledge to commission complex assembly applications in a short time. The user is efficiently led through the whole process by intuitive operator guidance. To reach the requirements of industrial pick-and-place tasks, a concept for moving the robot by specialized jog controls is presented that allows a fast and user-friendly teaching with high precision. Furthermore, an intuitive approach for selection and parameterization of complex object detection sequences is described. Usability tests with machine setters showed that the human-machine-interface meets industrial needs without requiring expert knowledge and the time for commissioning can be shortened to a few hours.