A Proposed Gesture Control System for the Control of Collaborative Robots in a Manufacturing Environment

Human-Robot Interaction is one of the key challenges in collaborative autonomous robotics. However, no standardised framework allowing either efficient portability to an actual industrial use nor comparison benchmarking exists. This work proposes, implements and evaluates such a set of common ground rules. We present the design constraints between different groups of requirements and a technical solution for automatic recognition using imaging hardware. The Human to Robot and Robot to Human Communications concepts are illustrated on the real industrial scenario: we focus on the definition of a set of gestures for Human to Robot Communication in automotive manufacturing. The case study outlines the need for a defined set of gestures for establishing a basic communication with the collaborative robot. First, the gestures are designed to respect the social acceptance principle. Second, a gesture recognition algorithm based on Dynamic Time Warping is used to demonstrate the feasibility of discriminating those gestures by automatic processing. Evaluation of our technique shows low confusion and high accuracy with this method.