CobotTouch: AR-based Interface with Fingertip-worn Tactile Display for Immersive Operation/Control of Collaborative Robots

Abstract

Complex robotic tasks require human collaboration to benefit from their high dexterity. Frequent human-robot interaction is mentally demanding and time-consuming. Intuitive and easy-to-use robot control interfaces reduce the negative influence on workers, especially inexperienced users. In this paper, we present CobotTouch, a novel intuitive robot control interface with fingertip haptic feedback. The proposed interface consists of a projected Graphical User Interface on the robotic arm to control the position of the robot end-effector based on gesture recognition, and a wearable haptic interface to deliver tactile feedback on the user's fingertips. We evaluated the user's perception of the designed tactile patterns presented by the haptic interface and the intuitiveness of the proposed system for robot control in a use case. The results revealed a high average recognition rate of 75.25\% for the tactile patterns. An average NASA Task Load Index (TLX) indicated small mental and temporal demands proving a high level of the intuitiveness of CobotTouch for interaction with collaborative robots.