Industrial Haptic Robot Guidance System for assembly processes

Human haptic sense is an important aspect for numerous assembly processes, especially in manual assembly, where the worker uses this sense to identify the occurring contact forces and tries to reduce them. Such an act minimizes the risk of unintended collisions or deformation of parts and thus guarantees a successful completion of the assembly process. Although the assembly of small/medium lots is normally carried out manually by a worker, the help of robots is mandatory in some cases, where the ability of the human being is hindered, such as the assembly of heavy parts. Some industrial robotic systems are available in the market, in which the robot is guided by a human operator to perform some tasks. However, those systems lack the haptic feedback. This work aims at the design and evaluation of an industrial Haptic Robot Guidance System (HRGS). The main role of the HRGS in assembly is to combine both human haptic sense and industrial robot capability. In this paper some research issues and approaches for the design of HRGS are introduced. Some preliminary experimental results are also included.