Robot Programming without Coding

Abstract

An approach toward intuitive and easy robot programming, consists to transfer skills from humans to machines, through demonstration. A vast literature exists on learning from multiple demonstrations. This paper, on the other hand, tackles the problem of providing all needed information to execute a certain task by resorting to one single demonstration - hence, a problem closer to programming than to learning. We use wearable consumer devices - but no keyboard nor coding - as programming tools, to let the programmer tele-operate the robot, which in turn records the most salient features and affordances from the object, environment, robot, and human. To enable this goal we combine off-the-shelf soft-articulated robotic components with the framework of Dynamic Movement Primitives, which we contribute to extend to generalize human trajectories and impedance regulation skills. This framework enables to teach robot quickly and in a intuitive way without coding. Experimental tests have been performed on a dual-arm system composed by two 7-dofs collaborative robots equipped with anthropomorphic end-effectors. Experiments show the functionality of the framework and verify the effectiveness of the impedance extension.