Telepresence in Industrial Applications: Implementation Issues for Assembly Tasks

Abstract

In contrast to automated production, human intelligence is deemed necessary for successful execution of assembly tasks that are difficult or expensive to automate in small and medium lots. However, human ability is hindered in some cases by physical barriers such as miniaturization or in contrast, very heavy components. Telepresence technology can be considered a solution for performing a wide variety of assembly tasks where human intelligence and haptic sense are needed. This work highlights several issues involved in deploying industrial telepresence systems to manipulate and assemble microparts as well as heavy objects. Two sets of experiments are conducted to investigate telepresence related aspects in an industrial setting. The first experiment evaluates the usefulness of haptic feedback for a human operator in a standard pick-and-place task. Three operation modes were considered: visual feedback, force feedback, and force assistance (realized as vibration). In the second experiment, two different guidance strategies for the teleoperator were tested. The comparison between a position and a velocity scheme in terms of task completion time and subjective preferences is presented.