Virtual Reality with Haptic Gloves for Human-robot Collaborative Assembly

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging industry 4.0 technology to enhance flexibility, efficiency, and quality to everincreasing economic competition. Autonomous robots can enhance the efficiency significantly in human-robot collaborative (HRC) assembly via VR components. A hybrid automation is taking benefit from the synergistic effect of HRC and the use of continuous simulations offer safe virtual space for validation. However, conventional simulations don’t allow to experience the production system as an end-user in an immersive environment. This paper presents the robot experiment on user interface design in unified framework for HRC assembly in a shared workspace. The experiment aims to verify the effectiveness of visual and haptic cues in various forms that convey the robot intent to human. A virtual laboratory was set up containing sense gloves and virtual input and output devices. The sense gloves were integrated into Unity and the SteamVR to perform the 3D tasks. To ensure real time interaction when capturing virtual objects, the virtual glove from the Unity libraries was the preferred option to generate the required events. Finally, the developed gesture control system allows operators to control an industrial robot via the VR environment.